(bright upbeat music) - Hello little learners, welcome back to our classroom.

My name is Miss Lara.

Hello, I hope that you're having a wonderful morning wherever you are.

Now, I'd love for you to introduce yourself, so wherever you are nice and loud, tell me your name in three, two, one, oh, hi, so this week is an exciting week because we celebrated earth day on April 22nd, and that means that we get to learn all about recycling and how to save our planet, so I have a little friend here, Curious George, who's gonna help us sing our introduction song and then we'll get to our book and other finger place all about saving the earth.

Are you ready?

Here we go.

Good morning, good morning.

It's a sunshine kind of day, come join Miss Lara for some learning and some play, we'll we sing a song?

Of course we will.

Make our brain strong, like super strong.

So come along, yes, come on friends for some learning and some play.

Now Curious George lives in the forest, and when we save and protect our planet, we're protecting where he lives, and we're going to be learning about ways that we can do that all this week, of course, I have a little song to share about saving the earth, which is the planet that we live on, and this song has some movements, so I want you to try it with me, and all week, we're gonna be doing it so that you can learn them.

All right, here's our first movement, we're gonna say I love, love the earth, and everything that lives.

I love the plants, so make a plant with your arm like this, and the beauty each one gives, huh, I love the animals and the fish at the sea, for I am a part of this earth and the earth is part of me.

Okay, let's try it a little bit faster, are you ready with your hands?

I love the earth and everything that lives, I love the plants and the beauty each one gives, I love the animals and the fish in the sea, for I am a part of the earth and the earth is part of me.

Ooh, I hope that you enjoyed that finger play.

Now of course, you know that I speak two languages and when you speak two languages or more, you're called bilingual, you might speak a language that I don't know, the only other language I know is Spanish, so I try to teach you a little bit of that too, and here's a song, a short one in Spanish that we can learn together, and it's all about recycling, and we'll learn what that means, when we open up our words here, okay, goes like this.

(singing in foreign language) Now one word that I wanna teach you is "tierra" that means earth.

So when I say "tierra" next time, you'll know what that means.

All right, should we get to our book?

Yes, let's get to our book.

We have a few words that we need to visit before we start reading.

So here they are behind my door, ta, ta, ta, ta.

So there are three words that we're gonna need to learn and put inside of our brain, so we can understand the book that we're gonna read.

The first one is recycle, special letter R are for recycle, now you heard that in one of our songs and in Spanish is "reciclar ndo" which is also in one of our songs.

Recycle means to take trash and turn it into something new, so you take trash and turn it into something new.

The second word is called environment, can you say it with me?

Environment.

That's right, special letter E, that means the natural world all around us, like the trees that we see, the dirt, everything all around us is our environment.

The last word is rubbish, special letter R for rubbish, that's the things we throw away are trash, so you might see a lot of rubbish in the bins around your house.

So, to be able to understand our story today, those are our three words, and here is our story.

I thought since it was earth day, that we would read a book about rubbish and recycling.

Those were two of our words, weren't they?

So look right here, you see three little children, and you see them putting something in a box, and that box has a special symbol, it's the recycling symbol, it's three arrows in a circle, so let's read about rubbish and recycling.

Now this book is what's called a nonfiction text, that means all the words in the book are true, and it even has a table of contents, that means if you wanna get to a certain page, you can just go down the list to the title and say, hmm I wanna learn about how materials are recycled, and then go to page 14, it's a longer book and we might not get through the whole thing.

So first page, what is rubbish?

When we no longer need something we throw it away, this is rubbish, rubbish can be anything from uneaten food to a broken toy, rubbish is a type of pollution, pollution means like chemicals or things that are bad for our environment, and you'll remember environment means the natural world around us.

Some of our rubbish such as food breaks down and disappears over time, other rubbish such as plastic does not break down, this type of rubbish is more harmful to our environment.

So look at all these, do you recognize what they are?

Water bottles, that's right, they're all plastic, so things like food they can be broken down over time but plastics last a long time.

All right, let's see, so have you ever wondered where our trash or rubbish goes?

Our rubbish is collected and taken away every few weeks, the rubbish is taken to rubbish dumps which are also known as landfill sites, so look, there's the rubbish being taken away, have you ever seen a garbage truck come through your neighborhood?

And they have these big arms and they lift up the bin and put it in the truck.

At landfill sites, our rubbish is put into huge holes in the ground, once the holes are full, they are covered over with soil, more sites are then made, so look at all of this trash, so it's put into huge holes in the ground, isn't it?

Imagine if we had to do that ourselves, thank goodness for garbage collectors.

Rubbish and the environment, landfill sites are bad for the environment, boo, we don't like landfills, the rubbish can leak chemicals into the soil and nearby water, chemicals are really for plants, these chemicals kill the plants and are harmful to animals.

The rubbish can also cause air pollution because of the smell, so it makes the air really, really bad, can you imagine standing right here and having to smell all that trash, pee you, I don't think I'd wanna be there.

Landfill sites are usually very unpleasant to look at too, I would not want to live near a landfill, how about you?

So now we're gonna move to what we can do to help, what is recycling?

Recycling is the process of making our rubbish into something new so it can be used again, so we can recycle metal, and later on this week, I'm actually going to show you how to use things like cans, to make drums and musical instruments, does that sound fun?

Lots of different materials can be recycled including glass, paper and plastic, by recycling, we can make sure that useful materials don't go to waste.

So remember those big piles in the landfill?

Recycling takes some of the materials and takes them out of the landfill.

How do we know what to recycle?

That's the symbol I was telling you about with the arrows, see.

Now I want you to pause and take a look around your house and see if this arrow symbol is anywhere, that means that you can recycle whatever material it's on.

Lots of things we buy have a symbol on them, which tells us that they can be recycled, you can usually find the symbol somewhere on the packaging like on the box.

If something does not have the recycling symbol ask a friend or adult if it can be recycled, so at your school or home, you might have different bins, they're usually green or blue, where you can put materials like glass or metal or some plastics, so that they can be not taken to the landfill and used for other things.

And look, what do you see there?

It's fire, oh, no, what are they doing with that fire?

Let's see the title, it says, how are materials recycled?

I wonder if this has something to do with how they're recycled, do you think that they burn them?

Let's find out, some materials including glass and metal, are sent to factories where they are melted and made into something new, paper and cardboard are washed with chemicals to clean them and are turned into pulp, the sheets of pulp are then rolled out to make new paper and cardboard, so there they are, and actually, this is something you can try at home, cut paper into tiny little pieces and put it in the blender, lay it out to dry and you can make new paper.

Rubbish and responsibility, the number of people living somewhere is known as the population, so look, this arrow means there's only a little bit of people living somewhere, and then as it goes up, that means more people are living somewhere.

Now, what do you think happens when more people live somewhere?

That's right, they create more trash or rubbish, as the world's population is growing, we make more and more trash.

Oh, that does not sound like a good thing, we cannot continue carrying on, filling up landfill sites forever, it's important that we recycle as much as possible to look after our planet.

And that is so true, this is where we're going to stop the book.

Remember you can always check it out at your local library, if you wanna continue to read it.

There's so many good ideas in here about how we can save our planet.

And I thought that we would review some of them right here before we move onto our project place.

Now I have three things that we can do in under five minutes to help save our planet and our environment.

Now I'm not gonna tell you what they are right away, I'm gonna sign them, I'm gonna use what's called pantomime, and then you're gonna try to guess.

So it says here, kids cans save the planet and it's true, we can, we are responsible.

All right, our first thing, see if you can guess what it is.

Did you guess?

That's right, you can turn off the facet when you're brushing your teeth, think about how much water you waste when you're brushing your teeth and the water is just running and running and running.

So the good thing to do is, you take your toothbrush, you put it under the water and then you turn the water off, brush your teeth for how many minutes, two minutes, and then you can turn the water back on, that would save so much water if everyone did just that one thing.

All right, here's the next one, are you ready to try to guess?

Number two, oh, this is a good one.

What do you think it is?

Yes, your water bottle, have you been to the store, and they sell those big plastic water bottles, those lots of 16 in a box, imagine if every family bought all those water bottles, we would be up to our necks in plastic.

So what I recommend is using a reusable water bottle, so like the kind that you might buy at the store where everything costs a dollar, the ones that you can wash, fill that up with water instead, that will save lots of plastic and keep that out of our landfills.

All right, last one, last one, last one.

You're not gonna guess this one, watch.

Oh, that's right, you got it, pick up trash wherever you go.

Now, I like to go on little trash walks, that means when you're walking in your neighborhood you just take a little plastic bag and maybe some gloves or those fancy picker uppers, and anytime that you see some rubbish or trash, you just pick it up and put it away, so it can go to the right place, so I hope that you join me in doing those three things to save our planet.

Now, another thing that we can do to save our planet and make our environment beautiful is recycle and reuse materials, and that's exactly what we're gonna do all week in our project place.

So our first activity is we're gonna make a hat, using newspapers.

Really, it's true.

Come on over and I'll show you.

All right.

So this is what our hat is gonna look like, isn't it beautiful.

My daughter made it, she wrote earth day on here, and even though earth day is passed, remember, every day is earth day, 'cause every day it's important to think about how we can save our planet.

She made her little roses and decorated blue with dots, and then you can even wear it.

Ooh, I look so fancy, so I'm gonna show you what to do to make one of these newspaper hats, so you're going to need some newspaper which is a recycled material, I'm gonna use some paints to decorate it, some tape, masking tape works best, some glue, if you wanna add the roses or any decorations and you're gonna need a child to model the hat, so I don't have one but I do have a bowl, and actually I found that using a bowl is just a little bit easier, it's hard for kiddos to stay still, so here is the first thing we're gonna do, we're gonna take our newspaper, and we're gonna use the double sheets, that means the ones that are extra long, and we're gonna use about two or three of them, and we're gonna put them on top of my bowl, or your child's head, just like this, so there's one, they're comics I'll read those later.

Do you still read the comics?

A lot of people don't buy newspapers anymore, makes me sad.

But you should check it out, if you go to your store, check out and see.

All right, there's two, and then we're gonna use one more, and put it on top and three.

Now I want you to notice a few things that I did, number one is, I put the newspaper so that it's all over like this, not in one way, so it's at different sides like that, so it sticks out, okay?

And I use three double sheets, the next thing you're gonna wanna do, is kinda mold it with your hand like this, and this is gonna be the part with the head, and see how it's kinda starting to look like a hat, and I know what you're thinking, how is it going to stay like this?

That's where our handy tape comes in, so we're gonna put a tape like this, and it helps if you have another person with you, but since I don't, I'll show, do not, I repeat, do not unroll your tape all at once, it will be frustrating, you're going to wanna leave the tape on the roll and just go all the way around two or three times.

So you can see why the bowl is easier, imagine having a kid stay there while you do this, well, it could be fun for them.

Okay, there's one, I'll play it all the way around so you can see, I'm gonna do it twice, maybe three times, so you can use any kind of tape but masking tape really does work the best.

Okay, and then my last time going around, the tape goes around and around, the tape goes round and round, making the newspaper hat, the tape goes round and round.

Okay, there we are, and you wanna kinda of get it to the end of it, like down here instead of on top.

Now you're thinking, how are the newspapers going to stay together?

So this is where you're going to need your stapler, chop, chop, chop.

And you're gonna take your bits and ends and staple them like this, and that's where you're gonna get your newspaper, so rolling around, ooh, have I gotten paint all over me, why, why can I not just stay clean once, do you have that problem too, always getting messy?

Same, same too.

So staple it all the way around, like this, now, you can make it as wide or as short as you'd like, these will be really beautiful to make in the spring.

Maybe take a family picture with them, and you're saving this newspaper from going to the landfill, you're giving it a new use, do you remember what that word means?

When you take trash and you turn it into something new, you recycle, that's right.

All right, here it is, the last of it.

Okay, now move my bowl.

Do you see, I can see this little part here, there's another good staple, let's do that, you kind of adjust it however you want it, it's not going to be perfect, but the best things in life, aren't.

So the next thing you can do is you can decorate it however you want, I've decided that I'm going to use some paints to decorate my hat, so I have some primary colors here that have already gotten a little messy and mixed, red, yellow and blue.

And did you know that you can mix these colors to make any other color?

So I'm gonna mix some yellow and some blue, and you tell me what color makes, a blue, a very, very light blue, it needs a little more yellow.

Oh, there's the green I was hoping for, you're gonna wanna take it and just kind of paint all the way around, now I won't have time to paint the whole thing today, 'cause as you can imagine it takes quite a while, so moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas out there, this is one of those activities that you can make with your child that will guarantee at least an hour of fun.

Because in addition to paint, you can add newspaper roses, newspaper feathers, newspaper dinosaurs, maybe.

I'd love to see you try, and make your hat, whatever you'd like.

Now I'm using just regular paints that I get at the store, but you can use whatever you have on hand.

The most important thing when you're recycling is to not go out and buy stuff, oh no, no, no, use what you have, you can start to see me covering the tape, how it starts to look like a beautiful hat for a king or a queen.

Somebody very fancy is going to wear this hat.

All right, I'm gonna paint just a little bit more, so you get the idea.

I hope that you join me tomorrow, because tomorrow we're gonna be making more things with recycled materials and reading one of my favorite books that we've read before, "The Paper Bag Princess" I love that book, it has a dragon in it so what's not to love.

Okay, this is what it's looking like so far, you can imagine when it's all painted, if that's what you wanna do, or if you wanna leave a newspaper like this, I hope that you give this a try, or maybe give something else a try, get creative recycle materials that you already have in your house.

All right, looks like it's time for us to go.

So remember to come back tomorrow for some more earth day fun, you're going to need some things to make musical instruments, I can't wait for you to join me.

Until then, Miss Lara is gonna give you a big smooch and a big squeeze.

I remind you to read and play, and of course use your imagination, your five senses to think like a scientist every single day.

Can't wait to see you back again.

Right, we'll see you later.

Goodbye boys and girls, have a great day.

Goodbye.

(upbeat music)