Daisies: Dark Green Petal

How to explain the difference between green petal and pink petal?

This one stymied me. But, being a huge proponent of the three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), I decided it really didn't matter. I'll just focus on all of it for both petals.

So here's what we did for the green one:

Who can tell me what Resources are? (Things we use.)

What are examples of Natural Resources? (Water, air, land, etc.)

What is being wise? (It's more than just being smart; it's also thinking ahead.)

How can we be wise about using resources?

Well, water is a resource. When you brush your teeth, do you think you should let the water in the faucet run while you're brushing? Or turn it off until you're ready to rinse? ("TURN IT OFF!" they all shouted.)

Right! If you turn it off, you're saving water. You're using water wisely.

I held up a piece of paper and said, "This is a resource too. Where does paper come from?" ("TREES!")

So if you are coloring, should you use one side of a page, or two? Which saves paper?

Since we meet in a classroom in our school, I always bring a recycle and garbage can with me. We always put our recyclables in our own can, and I take them home with me to recycle. It's even on our Kaper Chart, that one girl is in charge of making sure recyclables so in the right can.

So I showed them the recycle can and the garbage can and asked which is using resources wisely. Why?

Then I held up one side of our coloring page (from this site):

And I held up a plastic, disposable water bottle (the kind that crinkles when you squeeze it.)

Reduce means using only what you need. (Like the water when brushing your teeth. And I shook the water in the bottle.)

Reuse means using something more than once. (Like drinking from a washable water bottle instead of plastic ones that would melt in the dishwasher if you tried to wash them.)

Recycle means turning something old into something new. (I set down the paper, and held up the bottle and this pen.)

I'd found the pen the week before, and brought it in to show them. I told them that the best thing was to drink water out of a bottle that could reused and washed and reused over and over. But if you needed to drink from a non-reusable bottle, be sure to recycle it, because it can be melted down and made into other things (like this pen!). And when the ink runs out in my pen, instead of just throwing it away in the garbage, or taking it apart and recycling the pieces that can be recycled, I can buy a new ink cartridge and keep using the same pen!

They were amazed. (It was odd, because I remember ink cartridges from when I was a kid. Now everything's disposable...but we're changing that!)

Then I flipped over their coloring page to show them this side (from here):

We had a snack, passed out crayons, and the girls had a blast coloring both sides of the page. Be sure to not use markers for coloring pages like this though, as they can sometimes bleed through!