Reflection #3 (creativity)- UN Day Red House Project

On October 25, 2013, it was UN day and our school held a house competition between the Red, Blue, and Yellow, to judge which house had the most efficient project for this year's theme: water conservation. For Red House, we planned to make a mini bottled plant that doesn't need a large amount of water to grow. This took just about an hour an a half to create five of this. The methods were simple but it just needed some time to make it.
The materials we used were:

• Five 1 liter bottles
• Plants
• Soil
• Pebbles/rocks
• Strings
• Glue gun
• Popsicle sticks
• Water
• Beans
• Scissors
• hole driller

We each tried to create one of this and I made one with a help of a friend. We first had to cut the upper part of the bottle which took some time because the plastic bottle was a bit thick to cut it out neatly. When it was fully cut out we placed it upside down pointing it downwards to the bottom of the bottle so that we can put the plant and soil into it. But before placing the plant and the soil we had to make a hole of the cap of the bottle to insert the string. Since the hole driller is a bit dangerous to use, the manong took the role of drilling out all the bottled caps. After inserting the string into the hole we then placed the soil and pebbles. We then placed some water in the bottom of the bottle. In order for this mini bottled plant to hang onto somewhere we had to drill three holes at the side of the bottle to place another long piece of string to tie it at the top. Since the string is not strong or stable enough to hold the soil and the plant, we placed three popsicle sticks at the side of the strings with a glue gun. After it dried out, we were able to hang it. Bean seeds were also placed into the soil if they wanted to grow beans. Other types of seeds may be placed like tomatoe seeds but since it may not be able to withstand the weight we only used beans.

After seeing the finished bottle I was satisfied with the appearance and also with the value of this project. Despite my hands going dirty, I enjoyed making it. We held second place for this project which I think is still a good stance. Through this activity, I got to remind myself again about water conservation. I think this activity not only alerted the people who listened to our speeches but also the people who actually made this.