As part of our efforts to explore sustainable living, our students have become very interested in “picking up garbage”. Every recess, some eager boys and girls return to the classroom with pieces of garbage that they proudly dispose of. But what about reducing the amount of litter that occurs in the first place?
School lunches and snacks are an important part of every Kindergarten day, and my school has taken a leading role in promoting “litterless lunches”. Students are challenged to bring a minimum of four reusable containers in their lunch kit on designated days, and classrooms compete against each other to see who has the highest percentage of reusable containers over a period of time. This year’s winning class will be the lucky recipients of a trip to our nearest national park, Riding Mountain, for a field trip!
My Junior and Senior Kindergarten class decided that we should extend this challenge to our partner Grade 1 class in Hamiota, and during our last skype call, the gauntlet was thrown down! Initially, the students didn’t seem too excited, but once we explained further how the contest would work, they were hooked! We debated if we should track pounds of garbage produced, but decided to go with tracking the number of reusable containers used each day. Today is our day for gathering baseline data before the challenge begins, and at morning circle time, we will be tabulating the number of reusable containers in each classroom’s lunches. We will also be singing a few of these songs from CanTeach. Watch this blog for our baseline data, which will be posted later today!
Would your class be interested in competing in the Litterless Lunch Challenge? If so, please comment on this blog post or contact us on Twitter @olcskinders. We’d love to include you!