by Allison McDonald

Earth Day is coming up and I have been talking to my kids more and more about why we recycle and what we also try to re-use at home.  As you can imagine we re-use many things for projects and activities I write about on the blog. So much so that my son will often hand me his garbage and say ” Can you use this for a project?” Even I haven’t found a good use for string cheese wrappers ! Today we are using a collection of recycled objects for a wide open art project. As you will see my daughter has a favorite earth friendly painting tool.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some paint, a tray for the paint, some paper, and recycled objects to paint with.  We went around the house and into my art closet to choose the objects.
2. Pour paint into the tray ( or cake pan) . I had my daughter look outside to tell me what colors she saw. Then we used those colors for the painting. I have the paper taped down because I had a feeling she’d end up finger painting and this keeps the paper from sticking to her hands and ending up on the floor.
3. Explore! This is wide open . She liked the toilet paper roll  but hated the little cap. The ribbon spool made interesting prints but the real fun was in using her hands. The ultimate re-usable paint brush! After plopping on the paint with her hands she explored the marks that some of the recycled objects made. Rolling the toilet paper roll was a fun discovery too.

Books About Recycling

The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle: A Story About Recycling by Alison Inches is awesome! I only wish that my son was old enough to enjoy it as much as I did. It’s not aimed at 2 year olds at all, but he did like to open it to the page with the recycling truck and point out all the parts to me. The book itself takes the reader through the complete process from crude oil, to bottle and then to synthetic fleece. I am not too proud to admit I learned s a few new things and had a few good laughs along the way with the books little bits of humor too. I think most 5 year olds would enjoy this book, and it’s easy to break it down for those unable to sit for this much text. Also the book was printed on 100% post consumer waste paper.

Trash And Recycling by Stephanie Turnball is a great book ! I learned more about garbage and the recycling process reading this to my son over lunch than I ever knew! He loved it and despite being a pretty sophisticated book for a 3 year old immediately asked to read it again as soon as I closed it. It explains the whole process from curbside pick up, land fills, incineration and recycling. The idea for today’s activity came from the sorting of recyclable garbage from this book!