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OUR CURRICULUM |
Facts are important and can be fun, but sometimes hard to remember. To get your concepts across in a presentation, it's smart to have visual aids, a funny skit or a game to play. Here are some things we developed: |
The Aluminum Can Mural (grades 4-8) |
Fact: There are 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans used in the United States every year (www.recycling-revolution.com). There are 301,139,947 people in the US according to the July 2007 estimate by the CIA World Factbook. Find out how much soda your community consumes: You can probably find the population of your town by doing a quick search on www.google.com Type in your city, state + population. On a calculator, take your population and divide by 301,139,947 (US population). Now, multiply that number (it will be expressed as a decimal) x 80,000,000,000. Now you have an estimate of how many soda cans are used by the population of your town each year. Divide that number by 365 for how many are used/day and divide again by 24 to find out how many are used/hour. The answers may surprise you. If you want to make a mural like ours, collect cans from local restaurants (pizza places usually have a lot) or your recycling station. Wash the cans out (fill up a sink so you don't use a lot of running water). Carefully take the tabs off so the cans will line up evenly. You should ask a parent to help with this part. You can afix the cans with tape to cardboard or a piece of thin wood. Check and see if your parents or friends' parents have any leftover from a home project. We created a design with a GREEN! "G". You should take your time to come up with a cool design. GOOD LUCK! |
Recycling Symbology (grades 2-5) |
Skits are a good way to get classmates to pay attention to what you have to say. Our moms helped us make Dr. Seuss Thing 1 and Thing 2 costumes and then we wrote a long rhyming verse about the 7 symbols of plastic recycling. As you can see, Johnny played the role of Thing 1/plastic symbol 1 and Bryce played the role of Thing 2/plastic symbol 2. We asked teachers if they would let us use photos of them to make Things 3-7, That part was funny! If you want to do something like this, you will first have to do some research from books or the internet to find out what the symbols mean. They look like this: |
Try internet search phrases like these: Plastic recycling symbols Plastic recycling classification |
To help you get started, you can modify the first few verses of our skit: |
Oh hello, Thing 1 Hello Thing 2 We have and audience, What should we do? I know these kids I know they've seen All our skits Concerning GREEN! They're very smart, Our grades k through four Let's discuss recycling plastic - you know, Bottles, containers and more When we throw away plastic, It's the earth we hurt There's something to teach you Look here on my shirt To recycle properly There's a code you must know A number in the triangle Tells you where plastic can go GOOD LUCK with your skit! Email us and let us know how it goes. |
The Historic Garbage Challenge Game Show (grades k-6) |
For one of our skits on HNN, we made up a game show. We had a host, a co-host/presenter and 3 contestants. The object was for the contestants to guess how long it would take for the objects on our board to decompose if thrown in the garbage. We had a separate board of possible answers from which they could choose. |
We had some silly prizes to make our audience laugh. This would be fun for a classroom presentation and also fun to quiz parents on a back to school night. Because it's a skit, you will probably want to script it. Watch a few games shows on t.v. to pick up host and co-host tips. (For this project, we got our facts from the Everything Kids' Environment Book see our "Resources") Have fun with your Game Show! |