AIM:

To reiterate the Reduce Reuse Recycle mantra, with a focus on Re-using and its potential for both art and creativity and also for making items that are highly useful e.g. a pillow.

PREPARATION:

• In the week leading up the lesson, collect as much soft plastic as you can, and rinse it and dry it before bringing it to the school.


• Hunt around for any unwanted clothes/ material


• Practice your sewing and, if you have time, make a pillow- case using any old material. Stuff it with some clean, dried and torn up soft plastic. End result: a pillow for your sleepy head; easy to make and full of soft fluffy plastic that would otherwise be burned or stuffed in landfill!

TOOLS REQUIRED:

• Plenty of rinsed and dried soft plastic


• Scissors


• As much old material as you can find- old t-shirts, trousers etc will suffice and will aptly demonstrate how creative and constructive the art of Re-using can be. Nice sulu material is cheap and available in town, so it might be worth asking Chief to fund just a couple of metres if you want to make something more fancy to entice the children into the concept of Re-using without scaring them off with dirty old rags!.


• Sewing needles


• Thread


• 4 seed packets for prizes

LESSON:

Intro/Recap:

• Take the children and all the tools outside. A more informal setting encourages the children to see Green Club as fun and different from normal school activities.


• Get the 2 garden monitors to take everyone on a tour of the garden- noting what has grown/changed etc and also ask the 2 compost monitors to show us how the compost bin is progressing.


• Quiz: do a quick true/false recap-quiz covering what we learnt about growing compost in Lesson 2 (true: hands on heads, false: hands on bellies). The 2 winners get a bag of seeds each to take home and plant as a prize and will also be the next 2 compost monitor for the week, in charge of checking that the right waste is going into the compost bin and for turning the heap once a week. Also do a quick true/false recap-quiz covering what we have talked about growing your own vegetables in Lesson 1. The 2 winners get a bag of seeds each to take home and plant as a prize and will also be the next 2 gardening monitor for the week, in charge of daily watering and weeding.

Move onto recapping issues discussed in lesson 3. Ask the children if they remember the 3R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and go over the meaning. Hold up some items of rubbish lying around and quiz them on how long each item takes to disappear (use rough guide in lesson 3 as a reference). Also go over the cycle of a plastic bag thrown into the sea, eaten by fish then eventually consumed by humans as discussed in lesson 3. Be as animated as you can (dependent on age group), as this example really seemed to help them engage with the concept of the harm that litter can do.

PRACTICAL PART:

Begin by getting everyone to join in cutting/tearing up the soft plastic into small pieces suitable for stuffing.

Help the children to cut the material (old clothes or otherwise) into rectangles big enough to fold in half for a fair-sized cushion. Encourage creativity in terms of shape for those confident with sewing; hearts, triangles, circles etc work well too. Fold the material in half and sew so that the material is inside out- this makes for a far neater visible edge on the end product. Leave a gap big enough for stuffing the plastic into and turn your pillowcase so it is no longer inside-out. Stuff with soft plastic and sew up the remaining gap. Result? A re-uZZzzzzzed pillow for weary eco-friendly heads/feet!

END:

Play ‘Dead Lions’ (game where everyone except the one judge lies perfectly still. If someone is seen to fidget at all (except for breathing- this is perfectly acceptable!), they are out and join the judge to search out those fidgeters. The last one to be seen to fidget is the winner!), with heads resting on pillows to demonstrate how brilliant and useful and even luxurious items made by re-using what you once though was litter can be!