Igloo (924 milk jugs!)

    924 milk jugs
    3 1/2 months
    25 students
    countless helpers
 + $30 worth of hot glue
 -------------------------
    1 Awesome Igloo

My first grade class has built an igloo out of recycled milk jugs.  To our complete surprise, we collected nearly 1,000 milk jugs!  At the end of September we learned about the harm of too much waste.  Plastic takes 100's of years to break down.  We decided to do something to make a change.

Over the past 3 1/2 months we have practiced our counting skills, recording how many milk jugs we've collected on a given day.  We refined our sorting skills, organizing and counting milk jugs by color of lid, type of milk and so on.  We learned how to read "short-hand" dates.  We experienced what expired milk looks like.  We used our reasoning skills to decide how and where to bulid the igloo.  We expanded our estimating skills, making educated guesses about how many milk jugs were in a set group.

Thanks to all who helped us collect milk jugs and glue.  Huge "THANKS" goes out to Carol Brennan for spending countless hours each weekend gluing milk jugs (So sorry about the loss of your fingerprint to the glue gun.)!

Next step: Students are working on a presentation about recycling and our igloo.  Check out http://www.gogreenfirstgrade.weebly.com/ for updates in February.