Recycle Ideas For Kids

Recycling is something we should all be striving to do to protect our environment – no matter what age we are. Whilst it’s easy to understand the importance and benefits of recycling as adults, kids sometimes don’t understand why we’re doing it, or what the point of recycling is. That’s why it’s important to keep them interested and engaged with the task so they actively want to participate.

Basically, it’s a good idea to come up with fun recycling ideas for kids, from games to competitions or hands-on tasks, so that they see the good side of doing it. Here are just a few examples of some fun ways to recycle with your kids:

Make toys and figurines

One of the easiest ways to get recycling with your kids is to make things out of things you’ll have lying around the house, which you would otherwise throw out. Toilet roll tubes are the easiest to collect, and things like egg cartons, yoghurt pots, cereal boxes and milk cartons can all come in useful. Why not make a rocketship or vehicle with the kids, cutting and pasting bits of these recyclables and helping the kids paint and decorate their creations.

Create games

One of the easiest games you can make is a jigsaw puzzle. This can be made from a cereal box, preferably one with cute characters your kid loves. Simply draw on jigsaw shapes and then cut accordingly to create a game your child can play over and over again.

Another great game to make is bingo. Simply use paper or recycled card to make bingo cards – you can even use bottle caps as markers instead of bingo daubers, meaning you can re-use cards over and over again. Play traditional bingo and help your kids with numbers and memory, or instead draw recyclable items on the cards so they learn more about the process of recycling as they play.

Make instruments

A fun way to teach your kids about recycling and music at the same time would be to create some homemade instruments. A sweetie jar or tin can easily become a drum, whilst adding lentils to an empty soda bottle will turn it into a maraca or rainmaker. If you want to get more creative, you could tie rubber bands around a tissue box and stick a toilet roll tube on the end and – voila! – you have a guitar!

There are of course many more fun recycling ideas which you can participate in with your kids, however these are three of the easiest and most common things to take part in. If you’re feeling more adventurous, why not make things from paper mache or set up a recycling scavenger hunt with prizes at the end? Either way there’s loads you can do to make recycling fun with kids, all you need to do is look differently at the things you might otherwise throw away.