Tips For Recycling Crafts For Young Children

Hey, where are you headed with that bag of trash? Did you know that you can use some of it for recycling crafts for young children? Your children can use newspapers, soda bottles, cardboard boxes, even toilet paper rolls to make fun crafts out of.

Newspapers

Newspapers can be used for a number of recycling crafts for young children. They can be used for a paper mache (pronounced moshay or mashay) head. Do this by mixing flour and a little baking soda with water until it makes a thin paste, then tear the newspaper and dip it into your glue mixture and place it onto a blown up balloon. They can shape the head however they want it, let it dry, then use markers or child’s paint to add the features. Those leftover pieces of yarn from your knitting basket work great for hair. Newspaper also can be folded up to make excellent pirate hats.

Soda Bottles

Two liter soda bottles can be used to make a tornado. Take one bottle and rinse it out well. Add water to about ¾ full and drop in some food coloring. Now clean out a second bottle and use duct tape to secure the bottles together at their openings. The second bottle should be empty. Now, show your child how to shake up the water using a circular motion, then turn the bottles over quickly so that the water is in the top portion, sit on a table and watch the tornado. It takes a little practice but is great fun. Smaller soda bottles can be great recycled crafts for small children, too. Show them how to put a message in a bottle.

Cardboard Boxes

Help your child cut out doors and windows in a big cardboard box and they have a playhouse. It’s even more fun if you let them color it, and add some construction paper to the top like roof shingles and some old material pieces as curtains. Cardboard boxes make wonderful boats, too.

Toilet Paper Rolls

Tape a couple of toilet paper rolls together and add string for a neck strap and your child has a pair of binoculars. Now he or she can put on the binoculars and the pirate’s hat, get in the boat, and sail to a deserted island, from where the message in the bottle will be sent, of course.

Get creative with your trash. There is so much that we throw away that make great fun for young children. They don’t need expensive toys. Don’t you remember when you were a kid? There was nothing more fun than an empty cardboard box, was there? Recycling gifts for young children is rewarding for you and loads of fun for them.