Learning About Trash and Recycling
For Kindergarten and First Grade Classrooms
How do you teach young kids that not all trash is really trash? Start by showing them that some of the things we toss can actually be reused, composted, or recycled—just not always in the ways we expect.
Using Ody Needs Another Hand, this classroom activity helps students learn to sort items into four categories:
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Curbside recycling
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ReCollective recycling (hard-to-recycle items like plastic film or textiles)
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Compost
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Trash
By the end of the lesson, students are often surprised to discover how much can actually be recycled through The ReCollective!
Activities include:
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Reading Ody Needs Another Hand and sorting the items from the story into the four waste categories
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Counting and charting the number of items or bags collected in each category (e.g., how many bags of plastic film or worn-out clothes)
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Upcycling projects, like making art with fabric scraps or other reused materials
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Sharing what they’ve learned at home, especially the fact that The ReCollective takes items most curbside bins don’t
Students even build simple bar graphs to track what kinds of waste show up most at their school. It’s a great introduction to real-world recycling and sustainability.