The Rolypig Composter was initially developed for children to use in schools to teach the value of composting. The inventors, Roy and Tom Gamlin, wanted to make composting fun and easy so young children would eagerly engage in this worthy endeavor. When Roy and Tom first brought Rolypig to visit schools, young children flocked to see, touch, and feed Rolypig.

Many nursery and elementary schools in the UK have pre-ordered Rolypigs for their curriculum. We welcome schools in the US to do the same. Creating lesson plans to accompany composting with Rolypig will be fun. Your children will enthusiastically anticipate their turn to feed Rolypig. Rolypigs will arrive in late July and be ready to ship in early August, 2005.

David Temple, a 4 th grade teacher and owner of People Powered Machines, is available to help you develop your lesson plans and curriculum using Rolypig. Some sample lesson plans will be available for you to use and will serve to inspire your ideas on how to use Rolypig. Rolypig will help educators make decomposition and composting a wonderful hands-on learning experience.

Would you like some ideas on how you can use Rolypig in your class and school?

* Have feeding Rolypig a daily responsibility on your job wheel. It will be a popular one.

*Have your students estimate how much organic waste your class generates each day from their lunches?

*Collect the organic waste from lunch and weigh. How close were the estimates?

*Ask your students what they think happens to the organic waste when it is gathered and fed to Rolypig? Collect, weigh, and chart over a month's time. Weigh the end product in the rear bucket and compare to estimates and original weights when fed to Rolypig.

* Worms, worms, worms. Put some healthy soil in a bucket. Count the worms. Add the soil to some compost and feed Rolypig. After a month what has happened to the compost and the worms?

Using Rolypig is fun and can be a springboard to a wide range of lessons in science, math, social studies, and language arts. Let's teach our children to value this resource of organic waste and at the same time conserve our landfill space.

The Rolypig composters are arriving soon. David will be selecting schools for Rolypig placement. If you would like to be considered for a Rolypig composter at your school, contact David Temple .