bouchons

It's been a while since I've been on this blog. Apologies to you, my dear reader. The good news is that I am still alive, healthy, and happy. And that I've been keeping myself occupied with bottle caps.

Bottle caps, you ask? Well, the children at my school have been collecting plastic bottle caps since the beginning of the school year as one of the activities associated through the comenius program. The comenius program is a collective project among schools in England, Belgium, Spain, Slovakia, and France to encourage the children to be "active citizens of Europe" (ACE). In January, we had the kids count all the bottle caps in the school and sort them by color.

After hours of counting and sorting, the kids began the creative process of putting them together to create images. As part of this program is to create cultural awareness, each school is responsible for representing another country with the bottle caps. By luck of the draw, our school chose England. Putting on their thinking caps, each class had to come up with one image to capture the essence of their neighbors across the channel.

The first class was the CE1/CE2, or better known as the 2nd and 3rd grade class. As leaders of this activity, they chose to depict the British flag, the Union Jack. With a ruler and a piece of chalk, one diligent student took the initiative to draw the outline of the flag on the floor.

Moments later, the kids began their travail.

And their betises.

Eventually after a couple hours of placing down hundreds of milk, water, and coca-cola tops, their vision came to a completion...

...and they decided to show off to their fellow peers.

Following their example, the other classes in the school set off on their designs. The CLIS (special needs) class chose a London phone booth.

Debating over a London double-decker bus and the Tower Bridge, the CM1 (4th grade) class decided to create the latter.

The CM1/CM2 (4th/5th grades) class was innovative in their representation of Big Ben.

The CE1 (2nd grade) minded the gap with the London Underground symbol.

With help, the CP (1st grade) made an impressive representation of the English Rugby mascot, a red rose.

Now the project is over and it is time to clean up the messes of bottle caps. The next and final stage of this project is to donate the bottle caps to a charity organization that will use them to purchase a wheelchair for a child in need. Although this may sound like a cliché, recycling can be educational, fun, and rewarding. (Enter groan here.) I'm quite proud of my kids. They did a good job and gave me an excuse to show off their work.