For over ten years, the young learners in Teresa Darr’s Caterpillar Room at Lindbergh Schools’ Early Childhood Education (ECE) West Campus have been on a mission to collect aluminum tab tops. These collected tabs — totaling between 50 and 80 pounds annually — are then donated each May to Ronald McDonald House Charities St. Louis, recycled, and turned into monetary donations for the organization.

This year, 12 large, plastic jars of various sizes were filled by Darr’s class.

“Our school community was looking for meaningful ways to incorporate service learning into the classroom,” Darr said. “It was a cause preschoolers could understand, connect with and participate in easily. They know what a can tab is. Service learning is more than volunteering or donating. It’s about tying acts of service in our community with the classroom teaching and learning that is already a part of my preschool instruction.”

Each morning during the collection period, the class is asked if anyone brought tabs. A jar is then brought to the center of the group’s circle, and a drumroll commences as students cheer “Go, Caterpillars” while placing their tabs in the jar.

“What the students in class enjoy is seeing the jars fill up right before their eyes,” Darr said. “Even if a family does not use cans, I bring mine from home and share those with the student so that they can participate in the fun.”

Though Darr doesn’t recall exactly what sparked the start of this project in 2015, she can say, without hesitation, that it has greatly exceeded her expectations. Darr also shared that some students even come back to visit and drop off tabs years after they leave preschool.

“Service learning is about creating deep meaning from positive actions — both academic and social/emotional,” Darr said. “My hope was that I would instill a value for the community and help a great cause in the process. The most rewarding part of this for me is that the students keep doing it after they leave my class. This becomes their cause, too. When someone sees you collecting can tabs, they want to know why, and then they start to ask if you want theirs. It’s such an easy way to have a huge impact.”