Earth Day Challenge Follow-Up

Hi Everyone! I am following up on yesterday’s Earth Day challenge that I started at home with my kids.  We spent some time building from recycled materials yesterday and worked REALLY hard at remembering to turn off unnecessary lights and water (this was particularly difficult for my daughter, GG).

Using recycled materials reminded me of a great story about a group of women in the Gambia region in Africa.  One woman, Isatou Ceesay, was upset about how much garbage was found on the ground in her community.  Plastic bags were everywhere and she decided to try to reuse them and create something beautiful from something that would’ve ended up polluting our planet.  You can listen to the story, One Plastic Bag by Miranda Paul on EPIC and find more information about the project on the official site.  (Brantford students, if don’t have access to Epic, please have your parents email me and I can forward a login code to you.)

If you feel inspired to create from recycled products, there are a tonne of suggestions online.  I liked these ones the best:

1  Plastic Bag Skip Rope (get some exercise and recycle!)

2.  Plastic water bottle and recycled yarn craft.  (This uses old clothing to make the yarn too, very cool!)

3.  Recycled magazine flowers.

(I’m trying this with my kids next, I’ll let you know how it goes.)

 

There are many more ideas online or maybe you have your own.  Please let me know if you have any cool recycled creations that you have tried at home.  Send me pictures if you have them, I would love to see!