With Earth Day coming up April 22, Nancy Cokely, Jefferson Elementary art teacher, is creating a clever way for her students to recycle. Cokely and her students are creating a mural of hot air balloons out of plastic lids.
The mural will be the length of the main Jefferson hallway and will go above the second set of doors and into the main entrance of the school.
Cokely has been collecting plastic lids all year and has had students organize the lids by color.
“Plastic lids aren’t recycled at the recycling center,” Cokely said.
Every day from 2:45 to 3:15 p.m. for the past week, during Jefferson’s annual assessments, if students got their work finished early they could chose to go to Cokely’s class and work on the mural. One student, Gabby Richards, has been getting her social studies work done early every day so she could work on the mural.
Cokely said Richards has a system that makes gluing the lids to the wooden board much easier.
“She flips them and goes,” Cokely said.
Though Richards’ favorite class is physical education, she enjoys art as well.
Cokely drew the mural on the board and Richards and her fellow students fill in with different color lids with craft glue.
Richards enjoys the project not only for its hands-on element but also for what it stands for.
She said it is important to recycle and pick up trash.
“Me and my parents go on bike rides on the trail and we will see trash,” Richards said. “We pick it up if we are walking the trail.”
The mural will be used as part of a grant application, which needed to have an image of a hot air balloon.
Cokely hopes to have the mural up by Friday in time for Earth Day the following Monday.
Students learn creative ways to recycle
