On Wednesday, April 22, Tesoro is celebrating Earth Day with an art project that starts at home.
This week, families are asked to bring in items they would normally recycle: cardboard tubes, clean containers, egg cartons, newspaper, bottle caps, and anything else that has reached the end of its first life. Once those items arrive at school, our children will use them to create original works of art.
More than a craft project
The beauty of this activity is everything that surrounds the art-making itself. Before a child can create with a recycled item, they have to understand where it came from and why we are choosing not to throw it away. That conversation, whether it happens at home when they pick out what to bring, or at school when their teacher explains the project, is a meaningful piece of environmental education.
Young children are deeply capable of grasping concepts like reuse, resourcefulness, and care for the earth when those ideas are connected to something tangible in front of them. A toilet paper roll becomes a telescope. An egg carton becomes a garden. A pile of newspaper becomes something entirely new. The transformation is the lesson.
Why families are part of this
Asking families to participate in the collection is intentional. When a child helps choose what to bring from home, they are already invested in the outcome. They arrive at school with a sense of ownership and curiosity. They want to see what their materials become.
It is also a natural opportunity for a conversation between parent and child about the choices we make with the things we use: keeping them in circulation rather than sending them to landfill, seeing potential where others might see waste, and taking small actions that add up.
At Tesoro, Earth Day is every day
Our garden program, our multicultural curriculum, and our emphasis on real-world learning all connect to a deeper commitment to helping children understand and care for the world around them. Earth Day gives us a dedicated moment to celebrate that, but the values it represents are woven into how we learn and teach every day.
We are looking forward to seeing what our little artists create this week. The results are always surprising, and they are always wonderful.