America Recycles Day® is just a little over a week away! It is a day when communities around the United States hold events to celebrate and encourage recycling. Kids R Kids Avalon Park is participating this year! On November 15, America Recycles Day, we will be accepting recyclable items from the children who attend our Learning Academy.
How to Get Kids Excited About Recycling
You can help your children become excited about recycling. Here are 4 ways to make recycling fun and meaningful for your kids.
Teach Them the Real-World Impact of Recycling.
Young children often love being outdoors, connecting with nature and animals. If your child has a big heart for the natural world, you have a great opportunity to get them excited about reducing, reusing and recycling. Sharing with them how their actions can help protect the animals they care about can help them understand the importance of recycling.
Reducing the waste that is sent to landfills and incinerators protects local wildlife and marine wildlife. Share with your children that recycling plastic bags prevents them from ending up in our oceans and harming sea turtles, whales, and seals. When you recycle paper, let them know that reducing paper waste saves trees and water.
Helping children understand the real-world impact of recycling will make it more meaningful.
Make Crafts with Recycled Materials
You can show your children the value of recycling by creating crafts with recyclables like empty egg cartons, tin cans and plastic contains. You could make colorful planters out of tin cans or a beautiful wreath out of painted egg carton pieces.
Pinterest is full of fun, kid-friendly crafts that you can do with recyclables. While you craft with your kids, you can explain how what they are doing is like what happens when you drop off recyclables. An example that you could share is that recycled glass bottles are used to make beautiful new kitchen countertops.
Make Recycling a Game.
Making it feel like a game is another way to help your children adopt the habit of recycling. You could get recycling bins for each of your kids and label them with their names. Every week, the child with the most recycling in their bin could receive a reward like an extra hour of screen time. Or, to help them remember everything that you can recycle, you could have a race to see who can find the most recyclable items in 5 minutes.
You can find more interactive recycling games on the website for America Recycles Day. (https://americarecyclesday.org/toolkit/)
Let Your Children Explore Recycle City.
Recycle City (https://www3.epa.gov/recyclecity/) is an interactive website that was designed to teach children about recycling. When you visit the website, you’ll see an illustration of Recycle City. You and your children can click on different parts of the city to learn about each neighborhood and how the residents recycle. After learning all about Recycle City, your child will have the opportunity to become the City Manager of Dumptown. They’ll be able to use what they’ve learned to save the city from being overrun by trash. It is a great tool to help your children strengthen their problem-solving skills as they learn more about recycling.
You can help your children become responsible stewards of our natural resources and beautiful country by teaching them the value of recycling. We hope that these tips help! Don’t forget to drop off a recyclable next Friday, if your child attends our Learning Academy!
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