Happy Friday, everyone! It’s time for the weekly mashup!

We hope you all had fun learning about garbage this week. Thanks for sending your stories about garbage, drawings of garbage and art made out of garbage!

In case you didn’t get it, you can still download this coloring page of garbage trucks that Robbi drew.

On Monday, we asked for stories about garbage! Here is one of our favorites…

“Trash Cash in my Dash. Crash!” by Tyler:

There’s garbage all over the world and it’s all sorts of different colors. It’s not our planet – it’s a different planet than ours. The people from that planet keep leaving trash on the floor. It’s really awful because 1,000 people live there and all of the people will get sick from all the trash lying around until they die. We should learn not to put trash on the floor. It should go in the garbage can.

And here’s a picture Tyler drew to go with his story.

Thanks, Tyler, for this timely parable of colorful refuse. If this planet of 1,000 people has trouble from leaving trash on the floor, imagine the problems that garbage causes on our planet of 7 billion! I’m going to read your story to my kids in hopes that it will persuade them NOT to keep leaving stuff lying around on the floor of their room.

Harvey also gave us a story about a “Garbage Defeater”:

Once there was a transformer named Garbage Defeater also known as Trash Defeater. He lived in a town called Trash Land. He always helps pick up trash. He uses his Sucker Upper to pick up scrap vehicles and metals and food and turn them into plant food. He sprinkles it with his crop duster.

Apparently, Harvey ran out of room on his writing paper, but he also thought that the Garbage Defeater would use his axe to chop up garbage and blades to grind up metals. The Garbage Defeater would also pick up broken art supplies and grind them up with chopped wood and turn them into coloring books for boys and girls.

Here is Harvey’s drawing:

A few observations:

1) the Garbage Defeater, AKA, Trash Defeater is one scary-looking dude. If I were garbage or trash I would be terrified to be lying about when he came my way. Perhaps he could keep the world clean through intimidation alone?

2) I love that his powers enable him to turn scrap metal into plant food. What marvelous engineering! Clearly we need kids like Harvey to run the world. Harvey, are you considering a presidential run in 2016? I would volunteer to be your campaign manager if that wouldn’t guarantee that you’d lose.

3) We have TONS of broken art supplies here in the barn. Would you please arrange for the Garbage Defeater to swing by this afternoon? We could use some new coloring books.

 

On Tuesday, we asked to see your garbage-themed drawings.

Here are Sydney and Bailey. They repurposed some things from the trash to make collages!

What fun! And what a great idea. The world has so much trash and not enough art.

Thank you, Sydney and Bailey for recognizing this and doing something about it!

Alden and Kato gave us garbage trucks:

In case you cannot tell, Alden’s truck is full of bags of garbage. (Her foolish, foolish father thought that it was full of bombs and goldfish.)

Kato’s truck is a “transformer rocket jet plane garbage truck.” Perhaps Kato should join Harvey in working on a solution to our garbage woes. Combining their joint ingenuity, we could turn a lot more art supplies into coloring books.

And here, from Paxon:

Paxon’s garbage removal scheme is not only sensible, but very exciting. For example, blue flame is much more interesting than boring old red/yellow/orange flame. Second, there may be no piece of advanced scientific equipment more thrilling than the ungravtyer. It seems neither bottle, nor egg, nor old crumpled newspaper is any match for its might.

On Wednesday, you participated in our garbage-themed KidQuiz. We asked you to tell us one thing you do or will do to reduce garbage in your home, school, or community.

Harry said:

“Recycle plastic bottles, papers, and toys (not big toys; just the little ones) that I don’t need anymore.”

An important clarification, Harry! We don’t want the Garbage Defender turning your big toys into coloring books, afterall.

Leila wrote:

“Reyoos lunchboxs.”

Leila: This is a fantastic idea. Buying a new lunchbox every day is not only extremely wasteful, but probably pretty expensive!

And Matthew suggested:

“I could reduce garbage by eating more of my kids’ leftovers. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.”

What a great suggestion. This Matthew character seems like a wise (and good-looking) fellow.

In summary:

We hope you had fun learning about garbage this week. We sure had a great time reading and seeing what you all came up with.

And now for this week’s big winner (this was a real challenge because you guys sent SO MUCH great stuff): Paxon is our garbage expert. We hope that he will use all of the prize money and grant funding that is sure to follow to develop a working prototype of the blue flame/ungravtyr apparatus. Perhaps when he does, it can fly in Kato’s transformer garbage truck/rocket/jetplane to Tyler’s troubled planet of 1,000 residents. Together, you Bobbledy kids will probably save the world. At least, that’s what we’re counting on.

Congratulations, Paxon! Thanks to everyone else!

Check back tomorrow to find out next week’s theme!