Calendar Art - Turtles

We voted to grace our calendars this year with vibrant, semi-abstract turtles.  But first we met Roxy - Rm 14's treasured classroom pet.  We were fascinated at the way she approached and peered inquisitively back at us.  As we gently touched her shell, we noted the texture and wondered how we could create that in our artwork.

Soooo then out came the pastels and here's the results, each with their own personality.

The background was created with a water colour and salt sprinkled on the paper while the water colour dried.  The effect created a perfect water backdrop for our hard-shelled friends.

Our Recycled Plastic Action Heroes

We're in agreement that using recyclable materials was challenging!  Our action heroes are made entirely of plastic milk bottles and tops, with capes made out of plastic party table cloths.  Some lucky ones got a touch of spray paint.  Our action heroes feature in our comic strips displayed in our classroom window for other students to read... but that's to share in another post.

Plastic - Take Action

It was clear that although we are an Enviro school, plastic packaging and plastic shopping bags are an ongoing problem.  We need to keep talking and sharing our enviro learning with each other, our families and friends.

We thought it would be a great idea to create action heroes out of recyclable plastic as educational tools to share our enviro messages.  Together as a class we designed our task.

Plastics - Explore Alternatives

After agreeing that superheroes and action heroes are catchy and motivating educational tools to get a message across, we researched all things superhero/action hero.  We collated our research and ideas on "mood boards".  This was the fun part!

Plastics - Identifying Current Situation

We split up into teams and decided on what each team would focus on.

Team 1 went to New World with our student teacher Mr Van Vroonhoven and tallied the amount of plastic bags they saw people walking out with.  They also how noted how many were using enviro friendly alternatives to plastic bags.

Team 2 emailed Room 14 as we knew they had conducted a survey on how much rubbish was being left around school.  We wanted to know what the rubbish they were collecting consisted of - was it mostly the dreaded plastic packaging???  Yes it was!

Team 3 designed and sent a survey home to parents asking them about their views on our nude food program at school, and also if they used alternatives to plastic bags when shopping.  We got lots of honest, responses.

Team 4 went around the school and took photos of problem areas where rubbish seems to accumulate, and took photos.  Sigh - we found lots of rubbish lying around, even outside our own room!

The last team researched for further information on plastic, what the little recycling numbers on the bottom of containers meant etc to share with the rest of the class.

Technology - Plastics

This term we have looked at the impact of plastic on the environment.  All we have to do is look out our classroom window to see all the plastic packaging and wrapping that gets left on the ground, to know that plastic is a BIG problem!


Learning about the Effects of Plastic

As part of our research, we looked at how long it takes different plastic items to decompose.  This chart on sciencelearn.org.nz was an eye opener and we realised we had grossly underestimated times.

One of our tasks was to create a timeline the width of our classroom.  There were certainly a few mumbles when pegging it up and finding somewhere to keep it while we wrote on it!  But it helped us to visualise the time it takes items to decompose in relation to our life span and major historical events.

Then we talked turtles.  Why???  It was part of our research on how sea life is affected by plastic.  It really hit home about how when we throw out our plastic bags we don't often think about what happens to them.  Out goes the rubbish, then it just disappears.  Out of sight out of mind.  

A few youtube videos later, we realised how plastic gets into the oceans, and turtles end up nibbling on plastic bags they mistaken for jelly fish.   Too late to realise their life threatening error, the plastic blocks up their digestive system causing them to float on the ocean surface.  Bobbing away on the waves, they die a slow death by starvation, unable to dive to food.  Very tragic and very disheartening.

As a reminder to us all to consider where our plastic can end up, we adopted a virtual pet turtle on our blog.  A small and insignificant gesture maybe, but nevertheless a reminder.