Pick-up #3 / Bring on the math

Elaina and Grandpa W. picking up bottles and cans at Stearns Park after a picnic with the cousins.


This was kind of an exciting round, because of the Labor Day holiday the park was full of bottles and cans to gather. There were so many in fact that we did an extra trip to the recycling center instead of holding onto all of them until the usual pick-up day. Drum roll please..... the combined trips to the recycling center came to a total of: 236 plastic bottles, 223 cans, and 11 glass bottles!

With three 'weeks' of data, it was time to start another faze of learning within the "Elaina Saves the World" project. MATH. I really struggle with math, so I want Elaina to get a good base of learning early on that will hopefully help her get a good start in a subject that has always been a bane to me.

We have a ledger going to keep track of expenses such as the gloves, material, and trash cans we've purchased. Along with keeping the income columns correct since half goes to her college fund, a quarter to her Elephant charity, and a quarter is Elaina's to save or spend. We've also started some graphs to help her visualize how many cans and bottles she is saving from the landfill. While she doesn't know numbers this high yet, she is able to help with the ones column to figure out where to plot the dot and of course the funner part of drawing the line

Cans and Glass


Plastic bottles



Elaina has some big plans of how she wants to spend her portion: books, dinosaur train toys, a scooter, a trip to Chuck E. Cheese, summer science camp, a vacation to Disney World like her Aunt Brittany,and a Disney cruise. Well you can't deny that when the girl dreams she dreams big!
Yesterday, with a very small loan, She was able to make her first purchase. She picked out a Tinkerbell book to use with her Tag system.

Elaina paying for her book at Target.


Thank you again to everyone who is helping make this project a success! I know she gets shy when we are making our rounds and won't talk, but believe me she talks about this stuff all the time : )