The Great Trash Bash

Our PTA group sponsors a trash pickup at one of our local parks. Each year we pass around a sign up sheet among the membership and moms sign up for one day to go pick up trash at the park. It's a great way to teach our little ones the importance of keeping our environment clean.

This week is our week for cleaning the park. We went to the library yesterday and found the perfect book to read before our expedition. It's called The Great Trash Bash by Loreen Leedy. In addition to teaching the importance of picking up after ourselves, it also touches on the 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. So we read our book last night and talked about our agenda for today.

I picked Nicholas up from school and asked if he wanted to stop at a convenience store for popsicles/ice cream to eat when we got to the park. He said no. Huh??! Whose child is this in my car? And more importantly, how can I stop for a popsicle if my four year old isn't wanting one? I finally managed to convince him that we should stop so we got our treats and headed to the park.



Yummy treats. Ok, time to get to work. Nicholas was excited about cleaning up the park although the park is always really clean so I knew we didn't have much work to do. Nonetheless, I came prepared so that each of us had a plastic shopping bag for our trash (REUSE!) as well as some disposable gloves to keep our hands clean. Nicholas loves wearing gloves so he was all excited to get his gear. We walked around a while finding little tiny pieces of trash and one piece of an aluminum can. It was so clean that Nicholas got bored with the lack of activity and ended up running off to play on the playground.





I'm not sure what these little plastic pellets are but they can be found at every single park in our area. They may be some kind of little BB gun pellet but I never see any kids playing with such a thing. Anyway, today Nicholas called them treasure and collected a bunch of them along with the help of another little boy who showed up to play.