Best Earth Day Experiment EVER!!!!!!

Need an experiment for this week?? I LOVE this Earth Day Experiment!!!! It is such an amazing hands-on activity and GREAT visual for the kids to see just exactly what reducing and recycling means!!!
First we read this book that you can find in my "Where does Garbage go?" pack.  This book talks about how when you throw trash "away"-it doesn't really go away!! It explains the difference between dumps and landfills. It also talks about things you can do to help...

Here is one of the pages from the book:

The book gets the kids thinking about what they can do to help.

There is also an activity in the pack where kids can sort different household items that they can recycle every day.

Last, there is a cute activity about tires. Did you know that tires take up TONS of space and can sit in a dump for thousands of years and NEVER break down??? This activity tells them ways that tires can be recycled.

So, then comes the experiment. To begin, each group gets a "Tiny Landfill" filled with tires.

The kiddos are given a marker and told to smash up their tires.

Wow!!!! Look how we've reduced the amount of tires that we had!!!!!!

Now, we take what's left of our tires, mix in a couple of other ingredients, mix it all together and......

Make a road!!!!!!!

 Here are all of our roads!!! Isn't that AMAZING?!?:) The kids think so!!! AND, they've reduced and recycled!!!!

Here is some of our learning:

Check out this experiment and all of the other activities in this packet! Just click on the picture below!!

 Happy Earth Day!!