Frankenstein, Pine Cones, and Recycling Bins - Smith

     Finally. That's the best word to describe my feelings towards this month's progress with our Summit project. Things are finally beginning to work. We finally got to do some volunteer work, and even got some sweet recycling bins for our house. Our help with Boyd has expanded to more than just the Think Green group, and now includes the entire school.
      Today I got to volunteer at Boyd for an hour in between my classes, which marks my first volunteer hour for the Summit project. A bit of a late start, but now that things are rolling the rest of the hours should follow quickly. We set up some craft tables during Boyd's recess time, and the kids had a blast. At one table they made Frankenstein monsters out of cardboard rolls from toilet paper and paper towels, and at the other they made bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter, and bird seed. The kids all got along nicely, and waited patiently when we were helping another student out. We attracted a good amount of the kids, as the rest of the playground seemed almost deserted. I look forward to our next project with them.
     We ended up running out of cardboard for the Frankensteins, and almost ran out of pine cones. I had to return to the house to get more bird seed, and picked up a bag full of pine cones while I was at it. I even found a paper towel roll's cardboard roll lying on the ground while I was out, and it was nice to know that the litter was serving another purpose minutes after it was found. Next time we plan on doing an event at recess we will need to bring more things so we don't run out of supplies. Some of the kids made Frankensteins on pieces of paper, but I didn't hear any of them complaining, I was really surprised to see such well behaved kids.
     We now have four big blue recycling bins for our house, which will come in very handy. Between the eight of us we can rack up a lot of recycling pretty fast, and these containers are a lot bigger than the cardboard boxes we have been using. We are planning on teaching some classes at Boyd about the nitrogen cycle in the coming weeks, and will be going into different classrooms to do this.