Celebrate Earth Day!

How are you going to celebrate Earth Day this year?  

We will have many talking points about recycling, pollution and our environment in my classroom on Earth Day for sure.  But my lessons on taking care of our earth doesn't just happen on Earth Day. 

On a daily basis I activity model ways to repurpose items for use in our classroom. 

 I bring in materials with the labels still on them and we brainstorm ways that the materials can be repurposed.  After the materials are used in our classroom the students see how successful the repurposing is, days later students are bringing in additional items for us to use!  You can collect a class set of anything you would need in no time.

Here are a few examples of how we all repurpose items in our classroom.

Gum containers are perfect for math manipulatives and last much longer that ziplock bags.

Who doesn't drink coffee?  These creamer containers are perfect for our Homemade Water Colors!  The spout allows for the students to pour just the right amount of watercolor for their project.  

So how many markers do you throw away during a school year?  Keep the caps!!  The caps are great math manipulatives for patterns and collecting color data.  We use them in our counting jars and the kids love them.  They also make the perfect game pieces for your board games too!

This is the coolest repurpose item we use in our classroom today.  The net bags that held our playground balls were hard to carry with little hands and after a month the bag had holes in it.   So now we arrive to recess in style.  The equipment manager is by far the favorite classroom job!

HaPpY EaRtH DaY!