How to Recycle Materials for Kids Crafts

Use recycled materials for kids crafts.

Crafting with children allows them learn with hands-on activities which helps in grasping concepts, developing hand and eye coordination, developing small muscle control and encouraging creativity. The use of recycled materials for kid's crafts saves money while teaching children the important of reusing resources to protect the planet from to much waste. Rather kids crafts are to be done with a lesson theme or just for fun at home, recycling materials for them is a enjoyable learning experience for children.

Things You'll Need

• Storage containers
• Adhesive labels
• Paper rolls (from paper towels and toilet tissue)
• Frozen juice cans
• Glass jars (from baby, pickles, relish)
• Plastic water bottles
• Construction paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Stickers
• Tape
• Pompoms
• Glue-on eyes
• Yarn
• Permanent markers
• Rice or dried beans
• Left over wrapping paper
• Hole punch string
• Wood beads

Instructions

Gathering and Storing Recycled Materials

1. Label storage containers with adhesive labels to hold your recycled materials. This helps in finding what supplies you need later for kid's craft projects. Examples of recycled materials include paper rolls, frozen juice cans, glass jars, water bottles and scrap wrapping paper.

2. Ask friends and family to save recycled materials for you when needing larger amounts. Day cares and schools sometimes need help getting recycled materials for art projects.

3. Remove paper and labels from the paper rolls, jars, and bottles. Wash and dry the jar, juice cans and bottles.

4. Place cleaned recycled items into the storage containers to organize them.

Kids Craft Ideas Using Recycled Materials

1. Decorate paper towel rolls with construction paper and stickers. Fill with rice or dried beans and tape paper over the ends to make rain sticks. As the rice or beans move slowly from one to the next the sticks make a rain-like sound. Put wadded paper, plastic, or foil inside to create different sounds.

2. Make puppets by covering toilet tissue rolls with construction paper and decorating them with pompoms, glue-on eyes and yarn. Glue recycled popsicle sticks to stick out from the inside to hold the puppets. Kids can create people, animals, and monsters.

3. Cut 2 inches off the top of the frozen juice cans. Cut leftover wrapping paper into small pieces and glue them to the juice can in a collage style. Add stickers to the design. Punch a hole in the side and tie a twelve inch piece of yarn through the hole. Tie a bead to the other end to make a toy in which the child tries to swish the ball into the cup.

4. Use the leftover cut-off bands from the frozen juice can tops to make band bracelets by gluing pieces of papers, yarns, and pompoms onto their outer surface.

5. Cut out ears, mouths and other facial features from construction paper and glue them onto the glass jars. Add glue-on eyes, pompoms, and yarn to make funny animals or monsters. Use jars to hold crayons, pencils or other items.

6. Color designs on the water bottles with permanent markers. Fill the bottles with rice, dried beans, or a few beads. Screw on the lid tightly to make maracas. Tie colorful yarns around the rim of the bottles.

Tips & Warnings

• Many items can be recycled for kid's crafts and is only limited to the imagination and creativity.

• Make a craft corner for kids where they can find recycled materials and craft supplies handy to make their own creations. It will give them the freedom to create and teach them how to keep things organized in one place.

References

• Makingfriends.com: Crafts from Recycled Products

Resources

• All Crafts: Recycled Crafts Projects