The "Bug Project"

they got to paint the bodies of the bugs

being a statue flying a bug  in the statue game

we helped glue on the wings and the bodies

Week 7 Blog

           Its finally the wrap up week of everyone's projects! Everyone has come to their final conclusion on how they helped the world be a better place. Our project ended up going really AMAZING! Mostly everything that we did went exactly how we planned it would. The only one thing that did not go good, was our paper drive that happened on a rainy day. All the ideas that we had, ended up teaching the school about recycling. Hopefully, they will all put it to action out of this project.  I think that in the end, picking this idea for a project was a fantastic idea.


           On Wednesday, we had our lessons with the third graders; it was a blast. All of the kids loved the idea and had a lot of fun. In the beginning of the class, we gave them lessons. It told them about recycling facts and we also asked them questions to interact with them. They really learned a lot from a 5 minute slideshow shown to them. From that, we learned that kids need something to look at that isn't boring for them to be interested. In the craft that they made, they got to decorate the wings and the body how they wanted. All of them ended up turning out really cool. 


           For this project, in two weeks, everyone will behaving their "final exams". All the groups need to create a slideshow explaining what they have done. This will also require a 10 minute presentation to the class. All of the people in the group will have to talk and it is worth 200 points! For ours, we already have it over half way done. It includes pictures of what we have done and also explanations of mostly everything that we have done. In the end, everything should end up really good and we should get a good grade on it. 

Week 6 Blog

             This week for our project is really putting all the finishing touches on. Everyone wants to finall get to their final product. In our group, we arewrapping up all of our activities. The collections around the school and ending this Friday. We had a lot of participation with it and it was a great part of our project. We had to change many things with that including the dates and what to collect. But in the end, everything worked out how we wanted. 
                       
             Something else that will be coming to an end and so startig is the third grade project. What will be ending is the pop bottle collections. With the three classes, there was about 100 bottles brought in from the students. The winner that we have will be planting a tree next week. That is also the week when we do out lessons/craft. We will br doing that for each class in different times of the week. I think that they will really enjoy it.
                       
           As for preparing the bottles to look like bugs, we have been taking class time to get all of the materials ready for the project. We will have to start creating our presentation soon also. This will involve us making a prezi (presentation) and talking to it with the class. We have been taking poctures of everything that we have done, and they will be in the presentation. I think that in the end, our project will be successful.

Blog week 5

This week, we are switching from collecting cardboard, to collecting plastic bottles. We got our video sent out to the principal. Hopefully, he will get all of the teachers to show their students. This one is a lot more advanced, and will draw the students in more than the last one. In the past week, we have collected a lot of non-cardboard materials. But in these next weeks, we hope that this announcement made it more clear to the school. We only want to collect plastic bottles in our bins, but the other items have still been good too. Our project is going very successful now that everything is actually “in play”.
 
Over the weekend, we had our paper drive in the parking lot of our school. We were doing that for another project along with ours. They plan to create flower pots out of newspaper for part of their project. When the time came, only one person in their group came and only two of my group went. It also started raining and no one came to drop off their papers. Even though we passed out papers to the whole neighborhood. We learned a lot from that experience. We need to plan our activities a little more.


For our pop bottle project, we got everything settled with the 3rd grade and art teachers. The kids will start making their "recycle bugs" on May 16th. So far, we have collected about 40 pop bottles from all the classes. Out of the three classes, only two have brought in bottles. One of the classes even brought in about 30 bottles at one time! All of our lessons are ready to be presented when they make the art activity. So far, this week has been the most successful out of all of them.

Plastic Recycling Video

Here is the second video that we created. It explains what we are recycling for the next two weeks. We also put more effects into it so it looks a lot better. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GnPaE-09lg

Week 4 Blog

           This week had basically been starting all of the projects. We have all of the collections starting in the school. Everyone loved the video that we made and got the classes to watch it. Most of the elementary saw it, but I don't think that all the middle school did. We got all of the bins that we need for the school. We put signs on them so that everyone knows that that is where they drop it off. It has been going really slow but I think that as the project goes on, we will get a lot more participation from everyone!
          
           We have also got everything together for our contest/craft/lessons. We will be having the 3rd graders collecting as many 2-liter pop bottles that they can. The class that collects that most will get to plant a couple trees on the school grounds. All of the bottles will be given to the art teacher. She is going to be teaching all the kids how to make a creation out of recycled materials. While they area making them, we the recycling team will be giving them lessons that we created. We will be teaching them how it can be fun for them to recycle. Hopefully, this will get them to recylce in their homes.
          
           Over the weekend, we will be having our paper drive. Our group gave out fliers to the neighborhood around our school. It says to bring in all of the newspaper and other papers to the backlot of our school. This is also a part of another groups project. They will be creating flower pots out of only newspapers. Something that we did this week was we created our second video all about plastic. It is a lot more advanced than our last video. My group is hoping that it will want to people to participate more than they are now.

Seattle Goes Green

          My article is about Seattle going even more green than they already were. They want to reduce the garbage that is going to the landfills. They have changed a ton of the rules that will make this happen. One thing that they have done is stopped the styrofoam take-out and plastic bags. Another idea that they have is to make the people recycle cardboard and compost their food scraps. Many other cities think that they can make this “project” even bigger. They want to pick up garbage only every other week. This would save the city at least $6 million each year. It will also keep 1,400 tons of waste out of the landfills.
          Seattle wants to try it on 800 different homes first to make sure that it isn’t a terrible mistake. Most of the other cities collect their trash every week. But some of the cities collect it less frequently. Some people got very upset with all of the gross garbage sitting by their houses and smelling terrible. If Seattle does do this, it will bring the recycling rate up to 60%! I think that this is a fantastic idea that many other cities should follow along with. It would help out our environment a ton.
          This article will help out a ton. We now know how many different “projects” that we can do to help out the environment. I think that we could do just as many projects in our school and even around our city. Something else that I learned from this that can help us is that they aren’t giving up. Like I said, they are going to do test runs on 800 families. I know that we will want to give up sometime, but if we follow what Seattle did, we will succeed.


Le, Phuong. Bloomberg Businessweek. 2012.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-04/D9U2OVV80.htm>.

Week 3 Blog

This week, there has been a lot going on. Something that is going to start this week is collecting the cardboard from all of the teachers. We made the cardboard video over the weekend and posted it on youtube. Our principal agreed to give all the teachers the link to show their class. It will give them all of the information about the collections we will have. It also tells the process of how cardboard is recycled. My group is really hoping that we will be able to persuade the kids to bring in the items. Participation is a really big part of this project and if we don’t have that, the project will fail.

We have made lots of changes to our plans so far. We are moving the collection dates a week later. We didn’t realize how fast that it was coming so we weren’t as prepared as we should have been. The recycling team also added something to our plans. On May 5th, we will be having a paper drive in the back parking lot of our school. We gave out fliers to the neighborhood around the school, and will hopefully have a lot of participation. Something else that will happen this weekend is making the video about recycling plastic for the next collection.

We have finally come up with the last two projects that we will do. The first one is a competition for the 3rd graders. We want them to collect as much recyclable items as they possibly can. Each class will have a box that we will weigh at the end. The winning class will get to plant a tree on the school grounds. The next project that we have is also for the 3rd graders. In art class, we are going to have all the kids create something out of totally recycled materials. While they are making the project, our whole team will be teaching them more about recycling. The main goal at the end of this is to teach them that it can be fun to recycle and that it is so easy.

recycling cardboard

My team made a video to promote recycling cardboard in the school. It includes a TON of facts. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V23feO6dUU8

our recycling website

This is the website that my group has made that has facts about recycling and a little more information about our project ideas. 
http://recycle2012.webs.com/

week 2 blog

          For my project, we are getting our school aware of recycling and encouraging them to do it at their homes. What our plan is to put up recycling bins all around the school. Every two weeks, there will be a different item that you can put in the bin. The three items that we will be accepting is cardboard, plastic bottles, and batteries. At the beginning of each new item, all the students will watch a short video that we are making so that they know how good it is to recycle them. We want them to realize how bad it is to just throw away those things where they will end up in the ground (landfills). What we are doing right now is contacting different places to get the recycling bins. We are also putting up posters in all the halls that will tell them about our project.

          Today we created a letter to send out to all of the teachers. We wanted the principal to send it out in an E-blast. When we contacted him, he said that he would definitely do it and that he loves our project. We also got in contact with a few recycling centers to ask for bins. One of the locations said that they would give us 6 bins to use for the rest of the year. This would obviously be very useful to our project. We are going to have this start on Monday or Tuesday and end sometime in May. We are hoping that we get as much recyclable items that we possibly can. It would definitely be a help to the community/environment. By the end of each week, we really want every bin to be filled up to the rim in the school.


          We have come up with a ton more ideas to do. What we want to do is have a contest in the school. Every class will make something out of completely recycled items in the elementary. The winner of each wing will get to plant a couple trees at school. Something else we want is for every kid to have a tree seed sent home with them for Earth Day. Another idea that we have is to have a paper drive on a Saturday in the parking lot of the school. We will give fliers all around the neighborhood and encourage everyone to bring all their newspapers and any other kind. Something we looked into is a place called Tree Huggers. They take anything recyclable and turn it into household usable items. We want to give our items we collect to them to make more out of them. After all, we are trying to help out in the world and make it a better place for others.