Recycling to Help Save the World

Each year, my school has a service learning project where we work on doing something to help make our world a better place.  This year, my class decided to focus on recycling to help our world.  We read many books about recycling and then my students researched recycling even more so that they could become experts on the topic.   Here are some of the books we read.

Once we became experts, my students wrote a book about recycling.  You can find this book in my TpT store for free!   This book helped them better understand what recycling is and how to do it.  They also shared the importance of recycling.

After we became experts on the topic, my students then collected various recycling items from home to make recycled instruments.  Here is a list of items you will need to make a shaker, guitar, and maracas.

• aluminum cans
• plastic bottles
• beans
• rubber bands
• saran wrap or foil 
• cereal boxes or cracker boxes
• Easter eggs
• plastic spoons
• masking tape

Once you've collected all of these items, you can have your students decorate their instruments.  So you may want paint, construction paper, or markers to help them decorate. Here you can see my students decorating their shakers using construction paper and markers.

Then, we put tape on the cans and surrounded them with their decorated paper.

  Once they completed this, the students added beans to the cans so that they can shake!  Then, we covered them with saran wrap and used a rubber band to hold it on top the can.  Students could then shake them!

Check out my students teaching you how to make a shaker and showing you how to use it!

Once we made the shakers, we then made the maracas!

My students added the beans to the eggs.  Then, they placed them in between two spoons and taped the spoons together.

You can see my student teaching you how to make a maraca and then showing you how to use it!

Last, we made our guitars!  Students cut out a rectangle in the middle of the box and then slid rubber bands over it.  They were able to then strum the guitars.

You can see my students teaching you how to make them and showing you how to use them!

Thanks for checking out our service learning project.  I hope this helps you spread the word on recycling!  It is important to keep our Earth safe and clean.