Dover fourth grade art students and their teacher Shel Wagner will be recognized at Keep Oklahoma Beautiful’s 31st annual Environmental Excellence Celebration next month as finalists in the statewide elementary school litter education contest.

Known as “Un-Capped,” the contest challenged elementary classes to create a joint work of art from plastic bottle caps and submit a collaborative essay explaining why recycling is important.

Wagner’s students submitted a bottle-cap mosaic of the state bird (scissortail flycatcher) perched in the state tree (redbud).

Photos of the artwork were posted on the KOB website for public viewing and voting, with the top three vote-getters advancing as finalists.

Along with Wagner’s class, Amy Mauk’s Gifted and Talented Class from Coalgate and Donna People’s fifth grade class from Vici emerged as finalists, with the winner to be named by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation at the Environmental Excellence Celebration scheduled Nov. 19 in Oklahoma City.

The collaborative essay written by the Dover class follows:

Our art piece is our state bird, perched in our state tree. As we built it, we talked about how exciting it is to see scissor-tailed flycatchers in real life and how pretty and colorful redbud trees are.

When our teacher told us about the “UnCapped” project, we thought it would be difficult to gather enoughplastic bottle caps to make art.

We were surprised by how quickly the tubs filled up. Even though our class is small, we were amazed by how many lids our families used.

Together we accumulated four laundry baskets of caps, and each of those lids represented a much larger bottle that had once been attached to it. We pictured how huge the pile of garbage would look if each of our caps had the original container with it. It really illustrated how big the problem of single-use plastic is.

Sometimes those of us who live in rural communities don’t think a lot about sustainability or recycling because we don’t think those isues apply to us. This project helped us to see that they do.

We also learned that nonrenewable resources like coal and crude oil are used to make plastic, so it is important to recycle, since those resources can run out. Our teacher said that ony a tiny percentage of plastic gets recycled and that lots of plastic litter ends up in our rivers and streams, harming nature and animals.

Thanks to this project, we will think before buying a product in a plastic bottle, and about what we do with the bottle (and cap!) afterward.

“These KOB contests, provide opportunities to create young environmental ambassadors by offering creative projects that teach students about the harmful effects of littering,” organizers said.

The state departments of transportation and environmental quality are sponsors of Keep Oklahoma Beautiful contests.

“We are appreciative of the positive working relationship we maintain with Keep Oklahoma Beautiful, especially with their anti-litter educational campaigns each year,” Oklahoma Transportation Secretary Tim Gatz, who is also the executive director for both ODOT and the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, said.