Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Many items that we throw away can be reused or recycled. Paper, plastic, metal, and glass are filling our landfills and polluting our oceans. The past few weeks we  learned how to help our earth and use our classification skills at the same time. I asked our parents to bring in household items that could be recycled. It did not take long for our recycling tubs to be filled with plastic water bottles, metal cans, newspapers, and paper products. We had a blast with our classifying games! I put two hula hoops on the floor and I gathered several items for sorting. I filled one hula hoop with plastic and one with paper products, then I asked the class to determine my sorting rule.  After the class watched me sort a few times, it was their time to shine! We determined that we could classify big and small plastic bottles or paper and metal products.

After we sorted and classified, it was time for a few story problems. We were able to use our water bottles for simple addition , subtraction, and early division principles. Each child could not wait for their turn to act out a story problem. I created a math story problem and the children would act out the problems and solve them during circle time.

One problem for everyone is litter! I used a poem to explain the meaning of litter. Poems and rhymes enhance your child’s language development. The name of our poem was Litter Monster. The Litter Monster threw trash on the ground and made a mess everywhere he went. As the children listened to the poem they were able to understand increased complex language. After the poem we looked for a Litter Monster on our campus . We took a trash walk and we searched all around our woodland campus for litter. This class gathered trash and helped to keep our campus beautiful.

It is very important to teach children that some items can’t be recycled and things we can’t recycle need to be put in a trash can.

Art is explored in this class everyday, and I used this unit to teach the children about our earth. I pulled up pictures of the earth in outer space and the children were amazed! After we saw the pictures and looked at the globe in our class it was time to paint. Each child painted with green and blue paint to create their own earth. After the paint was dry the children had to tear forest green paper to place on their earth. We learned that the green paint represented the land and the blue paint represented the bodies of water that are on the earth. As we used mixed mediums for this project, your child was  building fine motor skills that will aid them in the future as they learn to write. We are very excited about our spring program and we can’t wait to show our parents our skills in math and language. Stay tuned as we continue on this exciting unit!