What a 2nd Grader Can Teach Us About Sustainable Gardening

Just before the school year ended, my daughter received a fun project from her 2^nd Grade teacher.  The assignment was aimed at teaching kids about recycling and how they can be stewards of the environment.  Each student was asked to build a robot made of recycled materials and write a story about their “recyclobot”.

Meet Tom the Grobot

We stated putting aside all of our bottles, cans and anything else that could have been used to make a recyclobot.  Once we had plenty of items to choose from, I helped my daughter put some of the items together as outlined in the assignment.  It was at that point, my daughter’s 8 year old imagination kicked into overdrive.  She decided she wanted her recyclobot to be a “grobot”.  Okay to be fair, she had just watched the movie Wall-e, but she decided she wanted her recyclobot to be able to grow something inside of it and further challenge her dad! But I liked that she was giving 200% to her assignment so I went with it.

She developed and wrote her story about Tom the Grobot, and I helped put him together.  I thought why not push the envelope and teach her a little bit about sustainability in the garden while I was at it? I thought I would utilize some of the knowledge I impart from our weekly #landscapechat and introduce her to the concept of collecting rain water and proper irrigation techniques.  Tom was not only made of 95% recycled materials (the other 5% were some HotWheels borrowed from my son) but he was designed to harvest rain water and to water the tomato plants he was nurturing.

My daughter came up with an amazing story about Tom the Grobot and Doug the Dumpster.  And when she presented it to her class, both her story and Tom got the biggest round of applause from the classroom.  What impressed me the most was at 8 years old she understands the importance of; recycling, its impact to our landfills, a broad concept of sustainability and turning trash into something that gives back fresh grown food.