World Cleanup Day 2023!

Kindergarteners of Tartu International School contributed to cleaner environment and took part of the World Cleanup Day. Our groups walked different routes in the neighborhood of our school and checked if there were places that needed to be cleaned up. Unfortunately there were!


Ready to take action!

Children were really passionate and excited when going "trash hunting"! They were very attentive to notice even the smallest pieces of rubbish.

Cleaning up the waste offered various learning experiences and arose opportunities to discuss different types of trash and the dangers that come along. The children learnt:

  • the difference between natural waste and man-made rubbish. At first some children also started to clean up old leaves, feathers and berries lying on the ground. After discussing the differences and talking over what kind of waste we are cleaning up, we found dog poop. Some children said that as this is also natural it can be left on the ground, so we had the chance to learn why it is still necessary to clean up after the dogs.
  • cleaning up the pieces of glass might help to prevent some dogs injuring their paws (we found so many pieces of glass and also saw dogs walking in the park).
  • there was more rubbish right around the benches than on the lawn in parks.
  • one can find quite a lot of rubbish on the side of the roads where is more traffic.
  • what are the different possibilities for the rubbish to end up on the streets, in the parks, at the playgrounds.

We did team work and divided areas so that some children cleaned up the lawn on one side of the path while other children checked the other side. While walking in the streets in pairs, some children looked mostly on their right, others on their left (a suggestion that was made by a 5-year old ).

What kind of trash was found? Mostly cigarette butts (Children´s reaction: "Not again!"), bottle caps, candy papers, lollypop sticks etc. We also found bottles that we need to bring to the tare machine and trade for coins.

Aftermath:

We will take care of the rubbish we have by handling it properly.

On our future walks and adventures, we will take a trash bag with us.






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