Mattydale, NY - Students and staff at Roxboro Road Elementary School in Mattydale decorated hundreds of pinwheels with messages of peace, then placed them outside their school last week.
The event was part of the worldwide project Pinwheels for Peace.
The Pinwheels for Peace website estimated 3.5 million pinwheels were planted with messages of peace throughout the world in celebration of International Peace Day Sept. 21.
Roxboro Road elementary School created pinwheels in art class and learned a song about peace in music class. In their classrooms, students drew posters and wrote about what peace meant to them.
"It is the hope of all the students and staff at Roxboro Road Elementary School that the spinning of the pinwheels in the wind helped to spread thoughts and feelings about peace throughout the country and the world," according to a news release from the school.
A United Nations resolution established International Peace Day in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. It was first inaugurated on the third Tuesday in September 1982. On the 20th anniversary, the United Nations General Assembly set Sept. 21 as the permanent date for the International Day of Peace.
Two high school art teachers in Florida started Pinwheels for Peace in 2005 as a way for students to express their feelings about what's going on in the world and in their lives. The art project, which falls on Sept. 21 every year -- International Day of Peace -- has grown from 500,000 pinwheels planted the first year to 3 million pinwheels in 2009 worldwide.
"Pinwheels for Peace is a non-political project," according to a North Syracuse Central School District news release. "Peace does not necessarily have to be associated with the conflict of war. It can be related to violence and intolerance in our daily lives. It can refer to peace of mind. To each of us, peace can have a different meaning."