UPDATED: Barr Students Plant Pinwheels For Peace

Nanuet’s middle school students planted their “Pinwheels for Peace” today in advance of Saturday’s observance of World Day of Peace. Hundreds of the handmade colorful pinwheels with symbols and messages of peace line the edge of the A. MacArthur Barr Middle School property along Church Street.

Seventh grader Kayla Diaz said Peace Day is supposed to be a day without violence and the pinwheels are reminders to people that peace is important to everyone.

“On my pinwheel I put a dove and heart and love and peace signs all over it to show many different symbols of peace,” she said. 

The students created their pinwheels this week during art classes with teachers Jacqueline Almonte and Denise Pentimone.  More than 300 pinwheels were placed on skewers to make the “Whirred Peace” messages visible to passers-by. Students wrote their thoughts about "war and peace/tolerance/living in harmony with others" on one side and drew or painted expressions of their feelings on the other side. 

One seventh grader said the purpose of the project is to “spread the word about peace.” He decorated his pinwheel with peace, love and soccer.

For the seventh year, Barr students are participating in the art and literacy project , which was started by two Florida art teachers in 2005. In the first year o September 21st, more than 1,325 locations throughout the world had about 500,000 spinning pinwheels. In 2012, the number of locations more than doubled to 3,500 worldwide with an estimated four million pinwheels. 

According to Almonte, the project is non-political because peace is not only associated with the conflict of war, it can be related to violence or intolerance in people's daily lives and to peace of mind. She said the definition of peace is what is important: “a state of calm and serenity, with no anxiety, the absence of violence, freedom from conflict or disagreement among people or groups of people.”