America Recycles day is November 15. In the spirit of “going green” my students created some posters to hang around the school promoting our lunch program’s “Waste Free Wednesday” campaign. The idea behind Waste Free Wednesday is simple: students that pack a lunch from home are encouraged to pack only reusable items in their lunch. Everything from the lunch box, thermos, plastic containers, even cloth napkins are encouraged to eliminate lunchtime waste.
My half-day kindergarten students don’t eat lunch at school, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get involved! After a classroom discussion about Waste-Free Wednesday, my students were thrilled to make posters advertising the weekly event. I copied the posters ahead of time on white cardstock (for added durability) and provided each child with a pre-printed poster. The text and image were already included on the sign, but it was my students’ job to bring the poster to life by adding a little color. We use crayons and markers on a regular basis and I wanted these posters to be special, so we decorated them with watercolor paints instead.
The children prepared their posters by tracing over all of the black lines on the sandwich image with a black crayon. This little step is great fine motor practice and the crayon wax provides a natural barrier to keep the paint from spreading and bleeding colors into different parts of the image.
Once the outlining was complete, the children were ready to paint! This project was done whole-group. I painted a sample and projected it with my classroom Elmo, while the students painted along with me. This was only our second time using watercolors this year, but OH MY WORD – what a beautiful job they did!
Once the sandwich was compete, the children painted the letters “Waster Free” that appear across the top of their poster. They selected their own bright colors for the letters. My only rules were no black and no brown paint.
I absolutely love how the finished posers turned out. This was the perfect way to do a painting project with a minimal time investment in my classroom. Plus the posters look so much more stunning than anything they could have colored with crayons or markers.
FREE Waste Free Wednesday Poster
If you have a Waste Free Wednesday campaign at your school (of if you are considering adding this weekly lunch feature to your school) I have a great FREE poster for you! You can download the same poster I used in my classroom for FREE in my TpT store
Additional information about America Recycles Day can be found here.