For the past few years there have been projects that focused on recycling and reusing plastic containers and in 2004 the First Grade took this effort one step further. Each class first collected just one hundred returnable plastic bottles. What did they do with these bottles? They did math, sorting the bottles by groups of 2, 5, 10 and counting them, adding groups of them together to practice adding together 2-digit numbers, counting them and tallying them as they came in and much, much more. They also did science with the bottles, sorting them by color, size, shape, function and then learning about how plastic can be recycled and reused.

They continued the project with a 'homework' component, asking families to collect and sort their plastic, glass and cans for one month. Students kept track of how many of each category they'd collected in their own home and then brought in the data to add up at school.

The students went one more step though, which makes this a true service learning project and asked families to donate the proceeds from their returnable bottles and cans for one month to the class' efforts. The students donated this money to the PTSA's Playground Committee. The students collected over $100, which is significant considering it was done in 5 cent increments!