<\/p>\n
When Lewis-Arriola teacher Alison Robinson sees garbage, she sees creative opportunity and a chance to teach about the virtues of recycling.<\/p>\n
She passed that lesson on to her fifth-grade class this fall during a hands-on recycling initiative program that included making art from stuff usually thrown away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a type of project-based learning that gets kids to be more creative and take ownership of what they are learning,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThey had to work as a team, be proactive and write an essay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students put recycling bins in classrooms, talked to school classes about energy savings, did regular trash patrols on campus and lobbied the school maintenance staff to let classrooms control the thermostat.<\/p>\n
But they had the most fun turning trash into art, then hosting a gallery last week showing off of their final masterpieces.<\/p>\n
Robots were a popular theme, plus there was an all-terrain vehicle, a custom mail box, and a homemade can shooter.<\/p>\n
Piper Baxstrom, 10, learned that \u201cone person\u2019s trash is another person\u2019s treasure\u201d and that it was fun creating her robot, named Golden Oreo, out of stuff found in the trash.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned it is good to recycle because it helps our environment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Thomas Gilliland made a tin-can fortress and said that besides using trash for art, \u201crecycling can save the planet. If we stop throwing stuff in the water, we can stop pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Audree Myers made a mail box out of trash and posted a picture of her cat Bob on the front. She said the class learned that almost everything can be recycled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can make toys from trash, like a car from a coconut shell, or a soccer ball out of twine,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we never recycled anything, our world would look like a huge dump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Classmate Kalli Korthank now sees trash differently, and created a comical-looking wiener dog made from paper towel rolls, an oat meal box, candy wrappers and Pop-Tart boxes.<\/p>\n
She said recycling cardboard and paper will \u201csave the trees in the forest because if they all get cut down, then most people would die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jonathon McDonald created a Triple Squadron Airship, a type of \u201call-terrain vehicle that can go through water, fly or be a tank.\u201d He enjoys repurposing trash into art.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for a while, a lot of my ideas are inspired by Star Wars and science fiction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Other projects included the Seattle Space Needle, TJ Comisky; flower collage, DeLace Daves; robot kind, Clayton Elliot; Killerbot, Hunter Goodall; Rotty the Robot, Easton Hartsoe; space shuttle, Tyler Jackson; alien, Ally Lowrie; digital can camera, Malea McNeley; T-rex, Preston Nielson; Billy Bob Jankins the Bull Rider, Neko Roybal; flower collage, Aalyah Robinson; Starbucks robot, Avery Stiegelmeyer; and ATAT, DJ Vreeken.<\/p>\n