Today I spent an hour at my son’s school with about 40 first graders talking about trash! The Great American Teach In is a time for parents and community members to come into the schools and show the kids what we do for a living. I love talking to the kids but I was a bit intimidated when I drove up…there was a garbage truck, a helicopter, and a police car in the parking lot! And here I come with my reusable shopping bag full of goodies. I was afraid they wouldn’t be interested but they loved it.
I decided that this year I would talk about the 3R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! The media tends to push recycling but they don’t mention the other 2 R’s. I started by asking kids if they knew where their trash goes to…that big hole in the ground we call a landfill…and told them that hundreds of years from now their trash will still be there! Then I talked about the Mobius Strip (the recycling symbol) and what it means. Did you know that it was created in 1970 by a 23 year old college student; Gary Anderson?
I showed the kids some simple ways to reduce and reuse their waste.
-Reusable bags
-Reusable water bottles
-Using both sides of the paper
-Using trash for craft projects
I even prepared a small craft project for the kids. I took some of our cardboard boxes from the recycling bin (cereal, pop tarts, mac-n-cheese, etc) and cut them to the size of a bookmark. Each kid got to draw and color a picture on the backside and I finished them off by adding a ribbon to the top. It was so cute to see the kids all excited about playing with trash!
I can’t wait for next year to visit again; I wonder what I’ll talk about then?
Looking for cloth diapering resources and tips? Visit my cloth diapering archives, follow me on Facebook , and on Twitter
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Sounds like you had it all figured out
Much more exciting than my reading to kids LOL
FYI – I linked back to you on my blog post about GATI…