Classrooms are Composting
Composting at PIC is not really a new thing. PIC's Roadrunner preschool classroom and After School Center have been worm composting since 2001!
But more recently, the entire Center has gotten involved and the amount of organic materials we collect has increased.
During the week, all of our classrooms collect fruit and vegetable scraps from lunches and snacks and store them in their freezers. On Tuesdays, a teacher and some children from the Roadrunner preschool classroom walk around the Center collecting food scraps to take to the worm bins.
What these Roadrunners have learned on their Tuesday excursions, is that we have outgrown our own worm bin capacity! Fortunately, there is a community composting facility close by.
Each week, the children set aside the extra food scraps that they have collected to be taken to University City District's Dirt Factory where high quality compost is created to be used in University City gardens.
PIC's composting program helps children understand the importance of caring for the Earth. Read what some of our young environmentalists had to say about why composting is important:
"When you compost it helps the environment. The environment is the Earth and where everybody lives. We don't want to pollute the Earth because the Earth can't feel good when you pollute."
"Composting is when there's a kind of thing, like say an apple. You don't eat all the apple all over because there's a grind in it, and you put it inside a worm thing and the worms eat it all up."
"Compost turns banana peels and orange peels into soil. The worms can get more energy when they eat the compost that we don't want to eat. They eat it and they make it into soil."
The compost PIC creates throughout the year is used in our children's garden giving children a hands-on understanding of soil, decomposition of organic matter, and the importance of diverting solid waste from the landfill. Learn more about PIC's Growing Up Green initiatives.