With schools closed and parents/carers having to home-school children during this period of lockdown, never has there been a better time to start teaching kids about recycling. We’ve come up with a few ideas that can help you get started and make teaching kids about recycling part of their everyday learning.
Here some activities that demonstrate the importance of recycling, how to reuse and repurpose materials while making it fun and functional for children as a learning resource.
Ideas for teaching kids about recycling
Reconstruct a robot
If you are anything like us, you will be ordered a lot of items online and they always come with way too much packaging. Don’t throw away the cardboard boxes, polystyrene and bubble wrap – these are all great materials for building your very own robot.
Build a bird feeder
On your daily 1 hours walk for exercise find some bark, branches and twigs and fashion your own bird table. Plant twine, cord or string will help you to tie it all together and hang in your garden or on your balcony.
Practice symbol painting
Ask your children to find commonly used recycling symbols and paint or draw them so they get to recognise the symbol and its meaning when out and about in public.
Fact finding activity
Create a work sheet and let your kids find the answers! For example by recycling one tonne of paper saves 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,000 kw of electricity. This means that the energy that could be saved can power your home for almost half a year!
Donate it – don’t bin it!
Instead of throwing away toys that your children have outgrown, box them up so that when the charity shops reopen, your children can pass on their pre-loved toys to help people who are less fortunate and help them to understand that other children and families in our own communities and around the world, need our support. You can also do the same with any clothing that they have outgrown and any paired shoes or trainers.
Encourage Textile Recycling
Here at Kids Just Recycle, we help schools, clubs, businesses, libraries and local organisations of all shapes and sizes raise money for their good cause or local initiative. We pay an upfront, lump sum to you for every tonne of clothing or reusable textiles you collect. We will provide a FREE branded bin to install on your premises and we will look after the cleanliness and emptying of the bin for you. All you have to do is fill it and keep getting paid! This is another great way to start teaching kids about recycling.
If you’d like to talk to us about getting a FREE recycled clothing bin, call us today.