What's Next?

      First official day back to school. Today we pretty much just got the first of our bins into place and clarified a few things. We also started on our second lesson plan for the 3rd graders. It is all turning out great so far!! I am really happy with where our project is going! Today we also planned what we will be doing all week. This week we will mainly focus on our 3rd grade adventure. Planning everything and getting the needed materials. We also plan to make our second video, the one featuring plastic instead of cardboard. I think we have a good week ahead of us!

Week 4 Beginnings

Last week as usually a lot was accomplished! We finally decided on what our project as a whole would be. Now all that's left to do is finalizing details and carrying it all out. This coming Saturday we have our Paper Drive at the back parking lot of the school from 1-4 pm. WE need to find a better way of advertising because we have recently found that putting fliers in mailboxes is illegal. So we will either find a different way to distribute the fliers or something completely different. Either way it needs to be done very soon. this week we plan to finalize the teaching the 3rd graders. We need to talk to Mrs. Fickle and decide what craft we will  be doing most deffinetly. I hope we have a good and productive week ahead of us!

Our New and FINAL plan

We had a crazy few days. Mostly because we rewired our whole project AGAIN. It is my understanding that we will be teaching either 3rd or 4th graders about recycling while they are making something individually out of recycled materials. We had a few ideas about that. the only problem is that we need materials. We have to figure out how to get  supplies for 75 kids! WE have either cancelled or postponed our weekly recycling pick ups because we failed to be prepared for that. We are still doing the paper drive as planned and we have ways to make sure people know about it already going on.

We are doing a different contest just with one or two grades. We want them to recycle as much as they can without bringing stuff from home. That means they will have to learn what to recycle from the things in their lunch, and the things in their everyday lives at school. The winning classroom will get to plant a tree no the Vanguard Charter Academy school grounds. We had a slight problem. WE were going to do a different contest and we were really excited about it. So, we wrote a letter to the teachers who would participate explaining what it was. But, then we changed our minds and before we could recall the papers the teachers had already all read the papers. there will be some confused 3rd and 4th grade teachers soon. OOPS!!

This is what we are hoping to do with the kids. http://img.ehowcdn.com/article-new/ehow/images/a04/hp/ot/making-plastic-bottle-animals-800x800.jpg

We had an Idea

The end of last week and the weekend resulted in a new path for our group. We have decided that the weekly recycling pick ups was not going to be enough and so we thought. What else could we do? We came up with two great ideas. One of them is a paper drie held to collect newspaper for a another group. The other group wants to make newspaper plant pots but, they were in need of newspaper. That also helps our cause because they are recycling something unwanted into a life up helder. The paper drive will be held as well to collect any other paper discarded by our community. This will take place on May 5th between the hours of 1 and 4 pm.
We are very excited to see the turnout of our paper drive.

The second marvelous idea that took place last week was a contest. Each class in the elementary and possibly the middle school will make something out of completely recycled materials. The contestants’ products will be judged by Mrs. Fickle and our group. There will be a winner from each wing. The prize, you get to plant a tree on the school grounds. We think this is a great idea because it is fun, encouraging children to recycle, and very “green”. This still has to be OKed by Mr. Vriesinga and there will probably be some adjustments but as of right now we are confident.  Before the weekend we decided to make a video for the every two weeks of recycling pick up to explain to the younger kids about what we are doing and what we expect of them. That was accomplished over the weekend. We have shot and edited it and hope it can be displayed Tuesday of this week.
http://www.stunicholls.com/gallery/trees/t4.jpg

End of week 2

We are working on polishing everything off before our first collection date right now. And we have made progress! We might have someone who will give us recycling bins for free, and if not be have a backup plan of regular cardboard boxes if needed. We have compiled a lot of research in the past few days that can really benefit us in the future of this project. We want to make a video for each of the two weeks explaining things about what we are collecting that week and also to connect with the elementary kids. I have made the script for the 1st week’s cardboard video and we plan to shoot the video at Kendall’s house on Thursday. I am hoping that we can show the whole school each video every two weeks so that they are all aware of what we are doing. The plastic video will be planned and shot sometime within the next week and a half. This project has a fantastic effect on each of our group members and we are all having a lot of fun planning each part of the final product.

First Week Up and Running

Today we accomplished a lot. In my previous paragraph I stated what we planned to get done and it all still applies. Today we have established a pick up day for our recycling movement which is Thursday of each week. We will all help with the collection of the bins and everything they contain. Then Carly and her family will drive it to the recycling plant. We all offered to take charge of the drop off if necessary. We also established which weeks we will be collecting what. Starting on monday we will collect Cardboard for the next two weeks. The following two weeks will be plastic bottles collecting weeks. Finally batteries will be collected for the last weeks of the collections. We still have the dilemma of nothing to collect the items in. But, that issue will be solved shortly. This next week will be very important for us to finish planning the project and after that carrying it out will be our main focus.

Little Steps To :)

This week we plan to tie up the last details so that we can get the recycling weeks all ready to go. We still have to find bins to collect it all in and decide on a place to put them in each wing. Lastly we want to make videos for every two weeks of recycling. Each two weeks for the next six will have either cardboard, plastic bottles, or batteries. With these videos we want to educate our younger friends about the ups and downs of recycling that specific item. Hopefully it will convince them to recycle and they might even think its fun! We have a website up and running with things being added to it frequently. As well as a Facebook page to connect to all the teens on the web. We are excited about this project.

Urban Recycling Starts

The project Urban Recycling is about how a few teenage girls and a little help can make a huge difference. We plan to contact people who can help and raise public awareness and see what we can do as a community to help the earth we live on.