the 3R's by jack johnson

Reduce, reuse, recycle!  

Happy earth awareness week!  

(Earth day is wednesday, april 22)

We started our "earth day" and  "TV TURNOFF" inspired week with a little listening to Jack Johnson... a great CD and the wonderful song, "The 3R's" (reduce, reuse, recycle) by jack johnson  (see video here) or (listen here).

Today we  focused on "recycling" awareness and one of the things we did was to go through our old crayon box and recycle the ones we did not need, (we have wayyyyyy too many...) to this great organization called "crazy crayons" , a national crayon recycle program.

(This recycling education, community service program has made it possible to stop more than 43,000 pounds of unwanted crayons from going into landfills with the help from school and organization educators and kids across this country.  The CRAYON RECYCLE PROGRAM takes old, rejected, broken crayons to a better place, where they’ll be recycled into fresh, new crayons!)

We  "reduced" some  of our waste we produce by taking old empty yogurt containers, or jam bottles and save them for future projects or for painting.  We will use the bottles to make a terrarium  (another project we would like to do this week.) and the yogurt containers we will use for painting jars and as "pails" for digging in the dirt outside or at the sandbox.

And we  "reused" some old stale bread we did not finish this weekend and made it into breadcrumbs!  Normally we probably would have thrown the old bread out... but we grated it and put basil, salt and pepper and saved it in an airtight container for future use.  (For delicious breaded veggies or fish.)

And...

we made some cute spring flowers using some "recycled" magazine paper.  (see below)

Want to make the project?

Springy spring "recycled"  flowers

you will need:

1. Magazine pages

2. Pipe cleaners

3. Hole puncher

4. A scissor 

Directions:

1. cut each page into long strips 

2. Punch 3 holes in each strip.  One in the middle and one on each side.

3. Insert the pipe cleaner in the center hole.  

4. Insert one side left or right) on top of the pipe cleaner

5. Insert the remaining side on top of the pipe cleaner.

6. Keep adding strips using the same method.  I used about 7 or 8 strips per flower.

7. Curve the top of of the pipe cleaner , to secure all the strips down on to the flower.

8. Arrange into a bouquet 

or... wear  it on top of your head!

DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT RECYCLING, composting, or anything that has to do with making everyday "earth day" ?

VISIT EARTH 911  (LINK HERE)

this website has great ideas, articles and links.