From Leftovers to Plant Growers: Composting Classroom
My students need a composting guide, a "Now You See It, Now You Don't" compost container, a worm composter Classroom Kit and a School Yard Gourmet compost container.
In the light of the shrinking budget in schools across our country, wasting any potential resource is illogical. Or so says my fifth grade classroom. Each day at lunch, tons of food scrap is dumped and doomed, left to join the other garbage and never to reach its full potential.
My students are fifth graders at a magnet school for Mathematics and Engineering.
We recently lost our Title I status but continue to have roughly 64% of our students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. Highly motivated with our hands-on, minds-on curriculum, my students problem solve in all areas of academia and dream big!
My Project
Recognizing the opportunity we have to change our planet and use what we have now to build the future is essential in today's scholarship. This project will provide students the opportunity to use their lunch leftovers from the cafeteria and turn it into rich soil. The process will begin with identifying the problem and identifying a sustainable solution. We will discuss composting and the materials that do in fact return to the earth and those that will remain their form for all time. Using the "Now You See It, Now You Don't" composting kit, we will investigate and observe examples of items we can add to our compost pile and items we cannot (banana peel vs. styrofoam cup). We will use our "Organic Guide to Composting" book to identify materials in our daily lives that could be added to our composting container. Gathering coffee grounds, newspaper and materials from the cafeteria waste, we will integrate our worm compost for optimal compost formula for the school garden club.
Having a hands-on experience with making the world a better place will solidify the conservation and recycling efforts into young minds.
The students already know that throwing away food seems wasteful. Providing them a solution and showing them the skills necessary to recycle-even food, into something greater than imagined, benefits generations beyond our comprehension. Composting grows minds and plants the seeds for the future.
Half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Green-Uber and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.