Happy Earth Day! We thought we'd share some fun projects that show how to renew, reuse, and remake everyday items into something new. Normally many of these items, like cereal boxes, coffee grounds or jelly jars would go right into the trash or recycle bin, but below we are sharing new ways to look at each of them.
This project from Spoonful shows the how-to steps for turning the families cereal boxes into creative magazine holders. Perfect for kids to decorate with finger paint too.
Mom or Dad, before you throw out those morning coffee grounds and half cup of cold coffee, try this clever fossil project using coffee grounds with your kids. Looking for even more ideas for recyling, check out http://spoonful.com.
While we love sharing the fun crafty projects, we also felt it was important to provide some information that helps both adults and kids understand the impact of Earth Day in the bigger picture. This article by the SF Gate has valuable information that is quite eye opening. We found it worth the read gleaning information in order to find ways to teach kids about the harm that some of our everyday items (and behaviors) can have on the environment. Simply changes like drinking more water out of regular drinking glasses, or reusing old jelly jars instead of plastic bottles - both filled from the tap - can cut down on the plastic produced and accumulated in our land fills.
Try making recycling fun by inventing ways for your kids to get rewards for identifying recyclable products. Or, have your kids become "recycling detectives". While shopping, have them look for products that have recycled content in them - showing them the RECYCLED symbol, will inform them while also making the experience of shopping into a game. These kinds of lessons will build lifelong recycling behaviors.
For more on what is recyclable and what isn't, check out http://www.greengirlrecycling.com/faqs.html.
Happy Earth Day!
Altruistic Apps.
