Making a beautiful day out of “Garbage”.

It was the best of days today.  It was “Learning Pod” day!  Every Monday, I get together with a small group of parents and preschoolers and we put on magical cloaks and off we go to the Land of Imagination.  A big cloak covered in “bits n’ bobs” for me and brightly colored little cloaks for the littles.  We gallop on our magical unicorns, riding amongst the stars to Rossini’s William Tell Overture as we begin our adventure of the day.

Today’s theme was Garbage trucks, because every Monday is trash pick up day where I live.  And every Monday, no matter where we are in class, when the garbage truck drives by, we stop the class and yell out loud at the top of our lungs “Hello Garbage Truck!”.  Sometimes, if we are lucky, the driver will stop and wave at us.  You might think there is just one garbage truck that passes our route over a one hour time period on a Monday morning. That would not be correct.  Oftentimes, multiple garbage trucks pass by about five times in one hour.  And each time, we stop class and yell Hello! I decided, if you can’t beat them, join ‘em.  It was time for the “Garbage Trucks and Trash Show”.

I need to wind the story back just a little bit, because I really needed some books on garbage trucks.  As we all know too well, we are in COVID time and whilst libraries in my area are open, you cannot browse for books in person, you need to order them online.  Luckily one of my neighbors, Neighbor Suzanne, is a librarian.  I called her and asked if she might do me a wee bit of a favor.  A few hours later, there were four books about garbage trucks sitting on my front door step.  Two of them were fiction and two were non-fiction, and one of them was called “I Stink” by Kate and Jim McMullan.  How’s that for service with a smile.  I LOVE LIBRARIANS! Just sayin!

Back to the class, as we dance our way to the Land of Imagination, we see giant garbage trucks in the sky, one is covered in jewels and another is rainbow colored. There is one where every trash bag looks like a balloon and is holding the truck up in the clouds.

We read our book called “I Stink!” We learn that dog poop goes into the trash.  Dog poop, we all giggle. We say in unison Peeoooh!  We learn about washing our hands after throwing the trash into the garbage can.  Today, luck was with me, because as I finished the book, we had the first sighting.  It was a real, live garbage truck! The kids and I ran toward the street, our cloaks flapping in the breeze behind us.  The little almost three year old, ran the hardest. “Wait for me, Garbage Truck, wait for me.”  But he didn’t see us, he zoomed up the street.  We just heard the compactor of the truck squeeze the garbage with a deep groan.

“Bye, Garbage Truck!’ We tried to make the best of it, but we were a little sad.  

“Let’s go back and we can draw and color and paint some garbage trucks.” The kids were such good sports, already hopeful that we might see another truck in the near future.  

We colored and we painted. It was good, messy fun!

Then sure enough…  We heard a chuffing! We heard a groaning! We heard a beeping! The next garbage truck was backing down the street into the cul de sac right behind us.  

Oh, we jumped up.  We ran to the cul de sac and we cheered the truck on her way.  She beeped and she groaned as she continued to waggle her green and yellow bottom towards us.  The garbage truck made her way all right down the street, until she rolled to a stop right by us.  We could see the driver in his mirror.  We waved like mad.  He waved right back at us.  What a hero! Then slowly, but surely, the big truck’s arm reached down and grabbed one of the green recycling trash cans and dumped it into the truck.  Oh, it was quite something to see. And up and up the street, the garbage truck picked up the bins one by one, beeping happily as it went.  We watched, close enough, but not too close. It wasn’t stinky at all and it may have been the best COVID 19 Garbage field trip that we could have taken.  

For more information on our “Learning Pods” click on the photo of Ms. Bits N’ Bobs below.