Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Littering

This week in science, we are talking about how we can reduce different things we use every day, how we can reuse different items we use every day and how we can recycle items we use every day. Since we are going to talk about reducing, reusing, recycling and the problem of litter for the next 2 weeks, I will keep adding to this post.

Monday we watched half of our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle BrainPOP and the rest of it on Tuesday. The kids were saying so many good things each time we paused that we could only get through half ... but that was fine by me! I even brought to their attention something that I was wasting when I left a light on in our library center (hey, teachers make mistakes too and they LOVE to see that we aren't perfect:))


After our BrainPOP Tuesday, we went outside to see if there was any litter on our playground that we could pick up and sort into our recycle cans. We have one for paper, one for plastic and one for cans.

She found styrofoam so we took it inside and threw it in the trash since we can't recycle it.

Our second week of recycling and littering, we talked about the different recycling groups and sorted some recycling I have been collecting for the kids. Then, the best part of the lesson ... RECYCLING RACES!!!

Monday, we went outside (it was so nice we just did the whole lesson outside) and talked about all of the different recycling I had in my big trash bag and passed a few different things to each group. We put a dot on each of their items (green for green group, purple for purple group, etc.) so we knew which ones they belonged to. After we went over everything, we went around to the concrete part of the playground and lined up in our table groups. The first person in each group had to get a piece of recycling, run down to my end, put it in the right trash can and get back to tag the next person in line. When all of the groups were finished, we looked at all of the recycling to see if it was in the right bin. If a group had no mistakes, they won!

 The first time through, every group had at least 1 thing in the wrong bin (the applesauce lids were tricky!). So naturally ... we played again! :)

The second time we played, there were 2 groups that had no mistakes! If we get all of our math and social studies finished before lunch the rest of the week, we're playing again Friday! :)

Tuesday the kids worked in their science journals and wrote and drew about why littering is a problem and what we can do to solve the problem of littering. The big thing we came up with is that littering is bad for our planet and we can help solve littering by picking up trash that we see on the ground and telling people not to litter.

Wednesday the kids had a special guest come and race with them while they sorted their recycling ... it was Dr. Sheets, our Superintendent! They were so excited!