Fun recycling classroom activities
Recycling week is here. At Hope, we value the importance of recycling and encourage others to recycle. It is vital the teachers take the time to show children the benefits of recycling and get them involved.
To make children interested in recycling, we have created some fun recycling classroom activities for you to try with your class. These will encourage your class to recycle whilst getting creative with different materials.
Build a robot
A creative and fun way to use up recyclable materials. Building a robot in groups allows children to take everyday materials and turn them into something new. To make this activity more enjoyable, make a competition between the groups where the best robot wins. This will entice your class to find as much recycling as possible to create the best-looking robot.
Let kids choose from lots of different types of recycling materials such as boxes, tin foil, soft drink lids, bottles, straws, paper and cans. Due to pupils choosing their items, they have to consider what materials would make a good robot. They will also understand more about reusing materials to create something if they pick what should be used.
Have craft supplies out ready to add to their robot such as glue, tape, felt pens and scissors to create the shape of the robot and bring it to life.
Create a bird feeder
A perfect recycling classroom activity is creating a bird feeder from toilet paper rolls. This is a great use of recycling materials as your class can give back to nature and create a place for birds to eat. It also gives an opportunity to spot as many different birds as possible, connecting children to nature.
All you need to create this is some toilet paper rolls, craft sticks, bird seed, sunflower butter or peanut butter and twine. Once your class has all the supplies needed it’s super easy to create the bird feeders.
Firstly, using the craft sticks spread the sunflower butter or peanut butter onto the toilet paper rolls. Roll this into the bird seed to cover it and thread twine or string through the roll to allow it to hang. Make sure to help children with tying the knot to make the string secure. Find places to hang the bird feeder outside for the birds to flock to the schoolyard. Encourage your class to create more to take home with them too.
Go on a recycling treasure hunt
Take your class on a fun recycling adventure outside the school. You can walk to a local park or woodland area together taking a checklist of recyclable items to spot during your walk. Kids will love spending time outdoors and spotting the items will encourage them to think about recycling. Make this treasure hunt a competition or race to see who gets the most and how quick it takes.
When finding items ensure to use gloves to pick up and have a clear bag to pop them in. These can then later be recycled or cleaned to create something. Along the way, teach your class the importance of recycling and encourage them to help the environment by throwing litter away.
For the kids to learn more about recycling, create a quiz question that goes with each item that they must answer once found.
Donate or swap day
A useful recycling classroom activity that allows children to gain something new and allows their unwanted belongings to be reused. Encourage a donate or swap day in your class where pupils can bring in unwanted items, such as toys. Set up stations around the classroom to lay out the unwanted items and allow your pupils to choose what they would like. Any leftover belongings can be stored in boxes to be donated to a local charity where someone else can give the items a new home.
This teaches children the importance of donating and giving to others as well as showing them that recycling items in this way is more beneficial to the environment than throwing them away.
Water bottle bubbles
This activity makes plenty of fun for your class to play with whilst recycling water bottles. Get use out of single-use plastic water bottles by bringing some bubble fun to the classroom. Water bottles and plastic are the leading cause of environmental damage, so this craft is crucial to help recycle them.
Create some bubble solution with your class using water and washing up liquid in a container and mix gently. Then either cut the bottom of the water bottle off and dip it into the solution. This allows children to blow the bubbles from the top of the bottle and create bigger bubbles. Or you can cut a small hole in the bottom of the bottle where children can blow the bubbles from, that will come out of the top. This creates smaller bubbles and allows them to float better.
To personalise this fun activity, let your pupils get creative and draw on their water bottles. These can then be displayed in the classroom, giving easy access to play with them again.
Tend to the gardens with a recycled water can
If your classroom and school have flowers or a garden, then this fun recycling classroom activity is perfect for getting pupils involved. Create some watering cans by reusing milk bottles that may be in the staff room, the kitchen or brought in from home. It’s simple to create and helps recycle plastic in a positive way. Let children create one for themselves to take home too.
All you have to do is poke holes in the lid of the milk bottle. This can be done with a needle that is heated a little from a flame to poke small holes through the plastic lid. Make sure you assist children with this as whatever you use to poke holes, it will be sharp. Test the watering cans to see if enough water pours out, if not, puncture some more holes into the lid.
Create fun recycling games to play
There are many games you can create for your pupils using recycled items to play with. Games are best for children to have fun with whilst understanding the importance of recycling to save the planet. Alongside games, teach children facts about the environment and recycling whilst playing so that they take in useful information whilst enjoying themselves. Below are a few games that you can try out:
- Bowling- use soft drink bottles as the pins and scrunched up paper as the bowling ball.
- Basketball- scrunch up old newspapers into ball shapes and create a hoop using a small bin. See how many balls pupils can get into the bin. This encourages children to throw away rubbish too.
- Jigsaw- cut up pieces of cereal boxes into jigsaw puzzle pieces and let kids piece the cereal box design back together again.
- Sorting game- fill a tray with different sorts of rubbish and get your pupils to sort it from what can be recycled and what should be thrown away. Have two separate bins labelled recycling and throw for them to put the items into the correct bin. To make this harder, create questions for each item and let children guess which item the question relates to.
- Online games- search for some fun free online recycling games that pupils can play to learn more about recycling. Check out national geographic kids recycle roundup game!
Recycling bingo worksheet
Another fantastic game to play is recycling bingo. Children can relate images to the correct words as well as cut out the words or images they want to use for the game. Call out certain items and see who gets all their chosen images or words first. To make it harder, you could ask questions about the words and images instead. Pupils will have to answer the question correctly to get the right word or image.
Download our recycling bingo worksheet to play with your class here.
Set up a recycling club
This recycling classroom activity will gather your pupil’s interest in recycling. Entice kids to join the recycling club by creating a fun schedule all to do with recycling. This club could occur during lunch or after school and is completely led by your pupils. Schedule games, competitions and activity worksheets to do whilst discussing local issues concerning the environment.
From this club, organise days out for pupils to go and make a difference in their community, whether that’s doing the recycling treasure hunt or seeing first-hand what happens at a recycling centre. These fun days out will teach children so much about the power of recycling whilst enticing them to stay in the recycling club.
Also, you could take the incentives to join the club an extra step further by offering children badges or stickers for accomplishing different recycling tasks and changing their local community.
Recycling competition
Enter our craft challenge to be in with the chance to win £200 to spend at Hope!
To honour the wonderful life of Queen Elizabeth II who played a huge part in education and children’s lives across the UK and the world, we would like you to create a tribute to Her Majesty using everyday items such as plastic bottles, tins, cardboard boxes, loo roll tubes, and anything else around your home or school that can be recycled.
As the Royal family have actively supported many sustainability projects and initiatives across the UK, our challenge to you is to create this themed craft using recyclable materials! The winning craft – chosen by our panel of judges – will receive the £200 prize.
Upload a photo of your creation or send it to us via email to: HopeSocialMedia@findel-education.co.uk with the name of your school or nursery along with what your craft represents and how it ties into the theme of celebrating Queen Elizabeth II. Entries close on Friday 7th October, so get collecting those recyclables!
Encourage your class to get recycling to help improve the planet with these fun recycling classroom activities. Teach them the importance of recycling this recycling week and fill your lessons with plenty of games and activities they will enjoy.
Show us what you get up to this recycling week on our Instagram!
Want some more recycling inspiration for your pupils? Check out our 7 ways children can help save the planet blog.
T&Cs for competition:
Competition is open to UK only. There will be one winner only. Prize includes a £200 voucher to spend at Hope on resources for your school. To claim the prize the winner will list the items they would like up to the value of £200 and it will be ordered and sent to them by the Hope team. There is no cash alternative. All creations must be your own work, work of individual pupils or the work of your classroom. A winner will be picked from all entries who have supplied a photo of their creation.