Habitats - Litterbugs [Not in Hands-On Nature]

Focus: Modern humans produce a lot of solid waste, and what we do with it can affect wildlife habitats. There are simple things that can be done by everyone to help reduce waste problems.

For Background and Activities, please see the Coordinator's binder.

Puppets (Litterbug, Danny Deer, Evergreen Tree, Willie Worm)

Materials Checklist
Puppet Show (puppets, script, assorted soft, clean garbage - styrofoam cup, newspaper, paper towel, paper bag, soda can, small pebbles, large rock) Trash Sort (small bag of clean trash containing examples of each R category: reducible trash (fast food or coffee containers, grocery bags), reusable trash (plastic bags, shoeboxes, aluminum foil), and recyclable trash (plastic milk jug, aluminum can); some material to compost (bread crust, vegetable peelings); signs saying Reduce (Don't Buy It), Reuse (Use It More Than Once), Recycle (Turn It Into Something Else), and Compost (Turn It Into Soil); finished compost or soil; time machine and professor's costume)
Whose Stuff ? Relay Race (two bags containing a mix of contemporary stuff and stuff from long ago, if doing 3-legged race, strips of cloth or old ties)
Pretty Packaging (individual and bulk snacks, reusable cups, plates, napkins, kitchen scale, packaging material like recycled newsprint, recycled boxboard, zip-lock bags, markers, etc)
Napkin rings and napkins (toilet paper tubes, paints or collage materials (wrapping paper, colored comics, tissue paper, white glue, brushes), markers for initials, soft cotton fabric for napkins)
Litter Looking (paper bags, newspapers, plastic work gloves, optional maps of school grounds)

Supplemental Reference Materials (Garbage Facts, Trash: Facts and Resources, Follow-up Activities, Compost Cycle/Composting Basics, Kid-Bits)

Additional Reading/Resources
Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up & Maintain a Worm Composting System, by Mary Appelhof, Flower Press, 1997.
Guide to Recycling Common Materials

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Litterbugs
* Word document * pdf file

For Younger Children
Many of the activities in VINS's new Small Wonders book can be used in ELF, too. To find appropriate activities for children aged 3-6, click here.

Teaching Suggestions
With older students, skip using the time machine in the introduction.

Puppet Show
Bring in a boom box and audio tape of swing music (In the Mood or Choo Choo Boogie or Judy Garland's Jitterbug) to play at the end of the puppet show for a fun final scene.

Trash Sort
Include and discuss specimens of locally collected litter during or after the professor's presentation, especially if you will not have time to do Litter Looking.

Whose House Relay
Make this relay a sack race! Give kids feed sacks to hop in and play swing music to hop by!

Pretty Packaging
Point out that with a surprising number of items (beverages, music CD's, toys and other small items encased in plastic), the packaging costs more to produce than the product being sold. Ask the children to name other overly packaged products.

Litter Looking
If your classes are cleaning up the school grounds, have a master map on which to mark areas already cleaned. Big clean-up jobs can be referred to older students or custodian.

Sort garbage into reduce, reuse, recycle piles.

Even if there is not time to do the litter hunt during ELF class, the leader can collect samples ahead of time from the local school yard and surrounding neighborhood. The local litter could be added to the professor's Trash Sort time machine presentation, or discussed later, after Pretty Packaging. Where does the local trash come from? If the biggest source of trash is fast food and drink containers, the children might discuss why. Besides products, our lifestyles themselves have changed, especially surrounding food, meals and 'eating on the run.'

Sharing Circle Extension/Alternative
Give children a chance to brainstorm solutions to the problems of litter and waste. Make sure the kids realize that some things have improved since their grandparents' day due to increasing environmental awareness. We try to protect water sources and locate landfills appropriately, keeping hazardous products out of the waste stream. Many people recycle. We expect our leaders to pay attention to environmental issues. In Vermont and other states, bottle deposit laws have successfully promoted recycling of soda and beer bottles. But the laws were adopted before the consumer thirst for bottled water, tea and juice and other non-carbonated drinks appeared, so many of these containers aren't covered.
What else can we do? Older grades may want to turn their suggestions into a poster for the class or to be displayed with others in a school ELF corner.

Other suggestions
Be careful to keep this workshop light and fun! Let kids see that they CAN make a difference.

Extensions
Give each student a trash bag to keep with them in which to put all their personal trash for a few days. Weigh and sort the bags at the end of the period.

Older students can interview grandparents or older neighbors to find out where and how they disposed of trash when they were growing up.

Papermaking (recipe): use a small (5"-6") embroidery hoop with screening in it. Fill a basin with newspaper slurry made ahead (but bring some soaked paper to show how it starts). Have kids put their names on a 7"-8" square of brown paper. Then each child scoops up some slurry onto the top of the screen, lets it drip a bit, covers it with the brown paper and flips it onto a large towel on the table. Then sponge the back until most of the water is suctioned up. Now put it on a windowsill to dry. The next day peel off the dried paper circle and each child has something to take home that they recycled themselves. They can each sprinkle dried petals or herbs into the slurry to make designs in the paper.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas

• In nature nothing goes to waste. Natural processes eventually return the nutrients and materials in all living things back into the system to nurture new life.
• Humans depend on resources from nature and make new things from these natural resources. Much of what we use is made from limited resources and much of that which is discarded cannot be broken down quickly or safely through natural processes.
• The growing amount of trash and chemical waste created by humans takes up space, ruins habitats and can cause danger to humans and wildlife.
• One solution to the solid waste problem is to decrease the amount of waste we make by “reducing,” “reusing,” “recycling” and “composting.”

Vocabulary: solid waste, pollution, decompose, decomposers, landfill, litter, natural resource, reduce, reuse, recycle, compost (definitions)

Skills

• Active listening to learn about waste and its impact on the natural environment and wildlife habitats.
• Discussing properties of “trash” items and sorting and categorizing them according to ways they might be disposed of.
• Comparing and contrasting patterns of waste production and disposal and identifying how these have changed over time.
• Role-playing to demonstrate some solid waste problems and ways they may be resolved or reduced.
• Modeling a simple solution to solid waste issues by making a reusable napkin.
• Collecting and evaluating evidence of solid waste in and around school and modeling helpful ways to deal with waste.

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S30, S49) Living plants and animals need clean water, food and air to live. Every day people consume natural resources; materials we obtain from the living and non-living environment.

Grades 1-2 (S30, S36) Much of humans' trash and waste cannot be used as food that can be broken down by animals, plants and other decomposers. Decreasing the amount of humans' trash is key to preventing damage to human and wildlife habitat.

Grades 3-4 (S30, S37) Plant and animal habitat is threatened by a growing amount of trash and chemical waste that cannot be 'recycled' through natural processes. People can help to prevent damage to the environment by reducing the amount of waste created.

Grades 5-6 (S30, S36, S49) Responsible use and conservation of the earth's resources and reduction of solid waste through reducing, recycling, and reusing is beneficial to humans and other animals.

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