A group of students set out to improve their local park by picking up garbage. In the process, they find many aluminum cans and decide to recycle them, using the money to buy flowers for the park. When the garbage collector accidentally picks up the bags of cans, the students decide to begin a school-wide recycling project. Together, they raise awareness for the project among the student body. As the cans start to come in, the organizers count and keep track of the total, placing the cans into bags of 10, 100 and 1,000. After surpassing their goal of 5,000 cans, the students celebrate Earth Day by planting flowers in the park. Additional suggestions for exploring place value are included at the end of the story.--Ministry of Education website.

Mathematics grade 3 (2009). "Level 3, Place value"--Cover.