Being green in a preschool classroom.

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Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:02:14 -0500

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Cereal Bags

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:52:31 -0500

My husband knows someone who reuses their cereal box bags as wax paper. This was a good idea. I actually let some cookies I baked cool on one of these bags after cutting it into a rectangle. I eat cereal every morning so as you can imagine the bags started filling my cabinet up. So today I decided this would be a good material to put on my art shelf in my classroom. The children can make winter creations with it and even experiment drawing and painting on the cut up bags with different art tools like markers & crayons. They can also be used as pretend ice for ice skating.

Plastic Christmas Bags

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:36:04 -0500

There a few ways to reuse plastic Christmas bags that were used to cover up a big gift…
1 Use it as a trash bag.
2 use it as a bag to carry materials to your classroom.
3 Mine was a green bag with pictures of Santa & presents on it; and it got a hole in it. So I cut all the pictures out and put them on our Art shelf for the children to glue onto pictures. Some children even made sleighs with card board blocks and squares that I had put on the shelf as well. The square cardboard had a circle hole in it that looked like a window. Then they glued the pictures from bag on their sleigh.

Ways to Resuse Materials During Christmas Time

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:12:45 -0500

During Christmas time there are a few materials that I reuse…

The first materials are tissue paper, ribbons, and bows. Tissue paper I normally keep at home to reuse for bagging other gifts, but if any gets a little hole in it I take it to my classroom. I put the tissue paper, ribbons, and bows at the art table for the children to make creations with them.

The other material I reuse in my classroom is my Christmas cards I get. After New Year’s when I take my Christmas decorations down at my house I tear off the parts of my cards that have the picture and no writing on the back. The part with writing can be recycled. Then I take the picture cards to my classroom and put them in the writing area for the children to make their own cards. My co-teachers and I also save the ones that don’t get used for the next year or add them to the art area.

Wrapping Paper Scraps

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:04:00 -0500

During Christmas time after wrapping presents; instead of throwing my scraps away I take them to my classroom and put them in the sensory table. Along with the scrap wrapping paper I add child size scissors, ribbon, and tape. I call this the “Elf Station” and the children practice wrapping objects in the room or things they have made.

How to make recycled paper

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:53:36 -0500

How to make recycled paper

Miley Cyrus "Wake Up America"

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:40:49 -0500

Miley Cyrus "Wake Up America":

Great song video about recycling!

Recycle Song by Noah Gomez

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:36:28 -0500

Recycle Song by Noah Gomez:

Great song to show the children.

Michael Jackson "Man in the Mirror"

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:31:54 -0500

Michael Jackson "Man in the Mirror"

Reusing Loofahs

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 20:35:00 -0400

There are a few ways to reuse loofahs in a preschool classroom. First I wash my loofah in the washer to make sure that they are clean. Loofahs can be used in the water table. The children can soak up the water and squeeze it into a bowl, bucket, or coffee container. Squeezing helps with fine motor skills and filling multiple containers helps with measuring and comparing. If dish soap is added they can also see bubbles and suds come out of the loofah when squeezing, which teaches cause and effect.

The second activity the children can use the Loofahs for is to do sponge painting. Today the children in my class drew a face with a crayon on paper and then sponge painted on top of it to make jack-o-lanterns. They made the face first so they wouldn’t have to wait for the paint to dry.

The third way to use the Loofahs is to have children make them into something at the art table. They could make them into an octopus, sea sponge, monster, ghost, and etc…

Empty Glade Candle Holders

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:37:00 -0400

Empty Glade candle holders can be used for the children to decorate and make a new candle holder. Add a tea light candle or a votive and you have a cute holiday gift.

Tv Dinner Trays

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:43:00 -0400

There are a few ways that teacher’s can reuse tv dinner trays in their classroom. Tv dinner trays make great divider containers. They can be used to create sorting games and to put different art materials in like feathers, pine cones, and beans for example. They can also be used to hold and separate different colors of paint. :) Another way to reuse tv dinner trays is to put them in the dramatic play area when it is turned into a restaurant or house.

Making friends.com

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:26:00 -0400

Making friends.com:

This is a great website to get ideas for crafts made out of recyclables.

Photo

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:17:11 -0400

recycling can

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:35:04 -0400

recycling can

More ways to recycle in the classroom

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:27:00 -0400

Recycling paper is also a good way to be green. I recently hung a plastic bag on a hook and put a sentence strip above it. The sentence strip says “Recycle Paper”. Labeling helps the children with their reading skills. I thought of recycling the paper because everyday I throw away a lot of scrap paper in my class and I watch the children throw away paper they mess up on too. Now we just throw all the scrap paper in the bag and I take it to a recycle bin.

I have also noticed more offices and classrooms getting the little blue recycle bins to put their recyclables in. I’m hoping to get some in my classroom in the near future.

Recycling Crafts

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:22:44 -0400

Recycling Crafts:

Here is a good website I found that shows you crafts to make with different recycling materials.

Games, art activities, and other ways to reuse materials.

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:14:54 -0400

There are many different games and art projects that you can reuse materials for:

1. Lids of different sizes and colors can be used for sorting and couting.

2. A plastic cupcake holder that a parent brings in for a treat could be cleaned out and used for making a game, sorting small objects, putting art material on the table, and holding different paint colors. These also come with big round lids that could be saved. I used one to make playdough in, drain our water table, and for cleaning paint sponges. It makes a great bowl that could be used for many other things as well.

3. Paper towl rolls can be used to make caterpillars, gazoos, spy glasses, and many other things.

4. Plastic bottles could be made into wave bottles, butterflies, and glitter bottles. One of my coworkers even made ocean bottles. She used different kinds of bottles and put blue water, glitter, and water ocean animal toys inside them. They look really neat and they’re fun to move around.

5. Lids can be made into many things also. The children can make lollipops, suns, frisbies, bugs, animals, and many other crafts.

6. Coffee cans can be made into drums, robots, and storage holders for the classroom.

Posters

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 21:52:01 -0400

One of my co-workers gave me a great idea to put on this blog. She made a poster for one of her activities a while back. The other day she pulled that poster back out and used the back of it to make another poster for a different activity. What a way to reuse that poster board and save our child care center money.

Reusing Materials

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:48:00 -0400

There are many ways that you can reuse items from home in your classroom instead of throwing them away.

Magazines can be put on the art shelf for the children to cut out pictures and make collages with. They can also use pictures from the magazines to look at for examples of some art projects.

Junk mail usually comes with envelopes. Instead of throwing the envelopes away I take them to my classroom and put them in our writing table. The children use them everyday making pretend mail. I also do this with sample credit cards that are sent in the junk mail and expired coupons.

When I open gifts with bows on them or I accidentally make a small rip in the tissue paper I take that in for the children to use at the art table. Paper towel tubes can also be saved and put at the art shelf.

Plastic containers work great for putting materials in at the art table, to use for storage, and it sensory tables or sandboxes.

Coffee cans make great play dough or goop containers and are also great for filling and emptying water from the sensory table. They are also nice to use in the sensory table and sandbox.

The dramatic play area has many themes and each theme need a lot of supplies. These are some of the materials that can be reused in dramatic play:

Old sun glasses
purses
shoes
clothes
jewelry
hair accessories
hats
containers
food boxes
newspaper adds
small furniture
cloth
notebooks
clipboards

These are just a few of the materials that could be reused in the dramatic play center, but really this list could go on and on.