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12 Activities for Teaching About Recycling
You’ve come to the perfect site if you’re seeking for recycling activities! I have you covered whether it’s for Earth Day, a unit on natural resources, or National Recycling Week in November. Take a look at these fun and interesting exercises that you can implement in your upper elementary classroom.
Activities for Teaching About Recycling
1.) Make Recycled Paper
Divide the class into smaller groups and give each group a page of a newspaper. Divide that sheet into groups and have them torn bits. Ask your kids to soak those little pieces in water for ten minutes in an aluminium pan. The paper ought to be submerged in water. Then, combine 1/8 c of corn starch (per piece of newspaper) with 1/4 c of water until the corn starch dissolves. The shredded paper and cornflour mixture should be blended for two minutes on high speed. Pour the final mixture over the screen that is placed over the aluminium pan. To make it thin and flat, uniformly distribute the mixture. Roll it out flat and wrap it in wax paper to squeezeany extra water out. If preferred, take off the wax paper (I let mine dry on the wax paper), and let it to cure entirely for a few days. Just now, you created recyclable paper.
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2.) Have a Gallery Walk.
Look around the room for recyclable materials and items that can be recycled.
3.) Trashtown.
introduce Trashtown to the students. There is no recycling programme in this town, thus garbage is piling up everywhere. Students create a strategy for starting and managing a recycling programme in their community in teams.
4.) Recyclable Inventions.
Each student should bring four recyclables and/or four nonrecyclables to class. Ask them to invent something for them. Read Olivia Newton-John’s book A Pig’s Tale (aff link). Because it explains where waste originates from, the effects of it, and practical solutions to minimise trash, I would read this first to establish the scenario. Then you can only inform the class that they will find a beneficial use for their “trash.”
5.) 3 R’s Triangle.
These triangle fact cards are comparable to this recycling exercise. You will notice one of the three R-words—recycle, reuse, or reduce—in a portion of the arrow. Ask students to either show, define, or describe one method they are accomplishing the phrase in the section of the arrow that it is pointing to. (See illustration below.) You can print these on light blue or green paper for added amusement.
6.) Collect Lunch Waste.
Put the leftovers from lunch in a garbage bag as a class. By weighing a student first, then the student holding the bag, you can weigh it on a scale. The weight of the bag can then be calculated by finding the difference between the two. Spread out the trash with care and go over the various recyclables and other options. Encourage pupils to waste less lunch.
7.) Create a Packaging Hall of Shame.
Look for items with a lot of packaging. assemble, then bring to school. Create a display and come up with waste reduction ideas. then talk about how to recycle some of the extra packaging. Have students create letters with recommendations for how the producers may lessen some of this waste as additional writing practise.
8.) Take a Field Trip to a Recycling Center.
I recall doing this when I was in fourth grade. To me, it was wonderful. It will be magical to them too, despite how small it might look!
9.) Bring in “Trash” to Sort.
Collect waste (including food, paper, plastic, metal, glass, miscellaneous items, and subcategories) and separate it carefully into reusable, recyclable, and nonrecyclable heaps. Next, determine the combined mass of a collection of goods and discuss how the accumulation of solid waste affects the environment. (This would also be a fantastic opportunity to talk about how to properly wash your hands and the impact of germs.)
10.) Create a Recycled Animal Zoo.
Encourage your children to make a recycled animal by gathering objects like milk bottles, laundry baskets, or the like. Bring along craft supplies like pipe cleaners, paints, hot glue, scissors, googly eyes, garbage ties, and hot glue to assist the students make their monsters. Ask them to describe their pet and how it helps to prevent waste going to the landfill. For instance, perhaps “Laundretta” is a monster that eats old clothing and crunches and munches on it to prevent the landfill from becoming overflowing.
11.) Create graphs.
Ask your students to keep track of the things they typically reuse or recycle at home. Newspapers, aluminium cans, plastics, glass, tin, cardboard, magazines, garments and other items could fall under this category. Make a class graph after everyone has made their own individual ones. A graph of all the paper your class recycles each day can also be made.
12.) Create a recycling superhero.
Why not have your pupils construct their own superhero. Who could not adore such concept? They can adopt characteristics from any existing superhero, including Superman, Spider-Man, Aquaman, and others. However, the superhero’s principal objective is to combat the crime of rubbish accumulation in the city. Have them draw the hero, then have them write a comic strip or tale about how the hero intervened to rescue the day. Make certain that they incorporate reducing, recycling, and reusing! Having three villains who each oppose one of the three R’s is one method they can achieve this.