Preschoolers Create Art From Trash

A frayed jump rope, a broken hose, an empty shoe box. For most, tattered, used or discarded items are junk for the recycle bin. But for two preschool classes at Hart Street Elementary School in Canoga Park they translate into art supplies.

Teacher Cheri Mahlknecht’s knack for trash collection and her enthusiasm to get students and parents to save scraps at home paid off recently. Artwork created by her classes was on display in the school’s front courtyard last week.

Her 4- and 5-year-old pupils had transformed a heap of stuff into their favorite storybook animals. The showstopper was Elmer the Elephant.

At nearly 3 feet long and 4 feet high, the patchwork elephant made by gluing colorful squares of tissue paper onto flattened delivery cartons was so large that students from the school’s morning class worked on one end and the afternoon class on the other.

The students recycled an old jump rope for the elephant’s tail and a crusty rubber hose made a perfect trunk.

“So many things are disposable,” Mahlknecht said. “It’s all trash, but we can do something with it.”

Mahlknecht doesn’t mind being called “the trash lady.” She’s been known to fish through bins at local businesses and construction sites for rubbish. She’s even convinced a local film developing service to save old film canisters for her students and a wallpaper store to save its scraps.

Her eye is always peeled at school, too.

“I’m always looking around for trash,” Mahlknecht said. “We have a very clean school consequently.”

The point to all this, said Mahlknecht, is to encourage preschoolers and their parents not only to recycle but also to start thinking of materials in new ways. She thinks they might be getting the point.

“I’ve heard [my students say], ‘Don’t throw that away! Mrs. M. wants this or that!’ They always see me taking stuff out of the trash.”

The students made a colorful Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web out of blown-up balloons, Franklin the Turtle from egg cartons and Clifford, the Big Red Dog, from old tissue boxes, to name a few. Some pieces of the exhibit are displayed at the school.

“Classes are asking for a demonstration,” Mahlknecht said. “Even the fifth-graders.”

KUDOS

Good Deeds: Seventh-grader Diana Taweel, 13, from Sierra Canyon School, a private school in Chatsworth, was selected as one of 10 national winners in the “Take a Stand” essay contest, in which students wrote about how they would take a stand in honor of civil rights leader Rosa Parks.

Diana’s 250-word essay was one of 200 entries selected by Do Something, a national nonprofit leadership and service learning organization.

For four years, the New York-based organization has challenged kindergarten through 12th grade students nationwide to perform acts of kindness to mark the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. This year, the challenge included the essay contest.

Diana’s essay “Take a Stand to Stop the Religious Wars and Intolerance” proposes a program in which children become familiar with faiths other than their own. She said she wants to start such a program in Los Angeles.

Learning about intolerance at her kindergarten through eighth-grade school made her want to do something about it, Diana said. “[We] children can change the future,” she said. “We can become grown-ups and make a difference.”

PROGRAM NOTES

Elementary school students are encouraged to show the diversity of Los Angeles through art by entering the “Celebration of Diversity” poster contest. The theme is “We are all different but we can play and work together.”

The grand prize is a $1,000 savings bond. Other winners will receive $500 savings bonds. Each winner’s teacher will receive a $200 gift certificate for classroom supplies.

Judges include a panel of local artists, community activists and representatives from Walt Disney Co. and the Anti-Defamation League, the contest’s sponsors.

Students attending schools in the San Fernando, Conejo, Simi, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys can participate.

Posters should be 16 by 20 inches. Watercolors, colored pens or pencils, markers or crayons or a collage technique may be used. Submissions with student’s name, grade, school and teacher’s name should be sent by March 1 to the Anti-Defamation League, 22622 Vanowen St., West Hills 91307. For additional information, call (818) 464-3220.

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