Turning old paper into new

Our 'Sharing The Planet Unit' is all about cycles and responsibility. After sorting our trash, we discovered that we had a lot of paper going into our trash. The solution; recycling! After ripping up and soaking our scrap paper in water, we can squish it out flat and make it into colourful new paper.

The end result drying. What shall we use it for? We need to make some science week decorations to give Grade 6 as a thank you for sharing their experiment with us, so maybe that.

Turning trash into compost

This week we have started our third unit of inquiry: sharing the planet. The two big focuses of this unit are 'responsibility' and 'cycles', which quite naturally leads in to recycling. One of my first provocations for the class was to dump out the days trash onto a tarpaulin and see if we could sort it into different types:


After setting up recycling bins for paper, plastic and food scraps, we set about painting labels and voting on which one to use. this was a good exercise on being 'open minded', as everyone's first instinct was to vote for their own or their friend's.The paintings that were chosen will be photographed, uploaded to seesaw, then the kids will recycle them into new paper.


We also met up with last year's preschool class (now prekinder A) to check on the compost they started during this unit last year. It was exceptionally stinky, but seems to have turned into dirt. We planted some seeds in it, along with some potting mix, to see if they would grow. Hopefully we can do the same activity next year as well.

Taking Action: Taking our friends to our parks

As we finish off our second unit, we got to share our inquiries into the local parks with our friends in other classes.

We first met with the kinder class and presented our map to them. We discussed all the factors we had decided were important for planning a trip (time, weather, distance and equipment) and decided to go to Amadaike koen, as it is big enough for nearly 30+ kids. We then showed them the directions on the map and set out to follow them together.When we got there, we enjoyed the rock climbing area and played some games together:



Later on in the week we did the same thing with our grade 6 buddies. they told us they liked jungle gyms, so we knew exactly where to take them: minami horie koen! We also decided to take our lunches with us and have a picnic, as lunch time was the only time we could go together.