This article begins with a thought-provoking question: What do you think of when you hear the term "recycle?" Many think about paper, glass, aluminum cans, landfills, and reducing waste by reusing some of these materials. How many of us ever consider the way the systems of Earth dynamically recycle its materials? In the following activities, fifth-grade students became recycling investigators who examine, discuss, and learn the rock recycling processes, as well as the characteristics of common igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks in light of the destructive or constructive processes that change them. In the "Next Generation Science Standards," outlined in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education," a renewed goal for science teachers is to engage students in the practices of science to understand how scientific knowledge develops through direct activity where learners investigate, model, and explain the world. Simulations are included to demonstrate Earth processes of recycling and the interactions that make materials change. Studying the recycling of rocks will open the students' minds to new ways of thinking about the Earth materials around them.