As part of his environmental science Hornaday Medal project for the Boy Scouts, Wesley Stocken (former MVCS student) posed this question to the 2nd/3rd graders as a year-long challenge. Could you reuse more? Throughout the year so far, opportunities to reuse things rather than discard them or even recycle them have come again and again. The students have had significant conversations regarding their own reusing habits, and everyone is looking at recyclables in a new way thanks to Wesley’s leadership.

One of the aspects of the challenge Wesley chose was to have the students collect bottle caps. While living in California for a year, he noticed the beaches littered with bottle caps. These usually are not allowed in local plastics recycling. Could reusing even something this small make a difference?

Well, the 2nd/3rd grade scientists have collected an amazon-size box of bottle caps so far and have thought of many, many uses for them, including game pieces, catapult projectile holders, and puppet eyes. This week, they designed a mosaic art piece made out of the bottle caps as a permanent addition to the MakerSpace. The bottle cap tail will stretch around the room!

Thank you, Wesley, for helping MVCS citizens to grow in their stewardship of this marvelous planet God created.

Throughout the year, the preschoolers and their 2nd/3rd book buddies have done STEM stations together using recyclables.

Students reused boxes as building materials during an architect station on Young Reader’s Day.

After reading novels, young engineers created solutions to problems within the story using our MakerSpace materials.

The Christmas giving project of blessing bags for the Haven included some neck warmers sewn with fleece scraps donated from local craftspeople.

During their poetry unit, the 2nd/3rd graders invented their own onomatopoeia sounds inspired by reused items.

A force and motion catapult challenge is just one of the many science activities involving reused supplies.

On Take Apart Day, scholars reused broken items to learn more about electronics and to take home parts for their own tinkering project extensions.