Thursday, May 29, 2008
By RICHARD L. BOCCIA
Pupils from Champion Central Elementary recycled glue bottles and sticks.
CHAMPION — Kindergartners from Champion Central Elementary beat 34,000 other classrooms at recycling, collecting more than 530 empty glue bottles and sticks during spring semester.
The class teacher, MaryGrace Clark, said she and the children took student teacher Shannon Gibson’s idea and ran with it.
“They were so excited when they found out we had won first in the nation,” Clark said of her class, which got the whole school involved.
Gibson said the project went far beyond what she had initially imagined when she found out about the Elmer’s Glue Crew recycling program in January.
“I never in a million years thought we’d win the whole thing,” Gibson said. But as the weeks went on, the class received phone calls telling them they were in the top 10, the top 5 and, finally, the national winners.
Clark said the project was more than just collecting glue sticks.
The class worked on counting, graph making and writing assignments inspired by the recycling.
The kindergartners, who are 5 or 6 years old, also learned about reducing their environmental impact. They could see how many glue sticks they went through, their teachers said.
Clark and Gibson also assigned the pupils to bring in something else they thought was reusable.
Gibson said the pupils were able to connect classroom recycling to their lives at home.
“I reuse as much as I can in artwork,” Clark said. Throughout the year, the class has turned everything from toilet paper rolls to disposable plastic ware into art.
“By the time they get to be adults, if they keep recycling things, maybe our earth will be a little greener,” Clark said.
To award the class, Elmer’s planted a flowering pear tree outside the school, and plans to plant trees in their honor in a national forest recently hit by wildfires.
In addition, each child got a plantable potted Colorado spruce, a T-shirt, a framed certificate and a book bag full of Elmer’s art supplies,
Ashley Sanders of SBC Advertising says Elmer’s intended the project to cut waste. The two Columbus-based companies worked together with Wal-Mart, which accepted the glue bottles for recycling, to take the Glue Crew project national.
“One of their mottos was, everyday is Earth Day,” said Sanders of the class.