Crayon Recycling

Last night I stayed up way too late trying to get to all of my readers blogs. I read every post, email and try to get to each blog, but it is getting harder. I did delete an email by a reader asking a question about what to get someone? I can’t find it for the life of me so if sent me something and I did not reply….try again (woops and sorry).

Lots of going green blogs out there! Go moms! My Greening: Going Green, wrote about recycling crayons to make candles. How clever. As a long time preschool teacher the recycling of crayons and markers has become common practice for me. Here is what I do:

~Grab an old muffin tin and preheat my oven to 150 degrees.
~I have my little guy peel all the old broken crayons and I cut them up.
~We randomly put them into the muffin tins because we like the rainbow colors.

~Bake for 15 or so minutes (you’ll see that they all melt together).
~Let the crayons and muffin tin cool and then pop out your new crayons. You can keep doing this over and over! No need to throw crayons in the garbage, ever! Great for chubby hands and fingers!

When the markers all dry up we use them for painting. The kids stick the markers in water cups and they’re suddenly water color paint brushes. It’s fun and a great way to make the most of those markers.

So thanks, My Greening: Going Green, for this crayon recycling reminder. A great Earth Day project to do with the kids!

Thursday's Green Tip!

Today’s green tip has me thinking a little bit about the book I just read, Wake Up and Smell the Planet. My green tip was to reuse aluminum foil but then while I was washing my sheets of aluminum foil, my husband said I was wasting too much water. So by trying to do something good, was I actually doing something bad? Yikes! That’s what the book sort of eludes to…the confusion of trying to go green and how sometimes it can be confusing and humorous at the same time. I actually just starred at my husband for a second and said, “Well, darn it all, at least I’m using non-toxic soap!” Geez, what’s a green and clean mom supposed to do?

That’s when I started doing some research and trying to decide what was better, to recycle or not to recycle the foil? Aluminum foil takes a lot of electricity to produce and it doesn’t exactly break down in the landfills. Probably the best is to just not use aluminum foil but it does such a great job at preserving food because it doesn’t let in light or odors. I use glass storage wear from Ikea or Crate and Barrel for most everything but sometimes I just need some foil. Aluminum foil can be recycled over and over so you should probably check with your local recycling facility or try Earth 911 to find out more about recycling the shiny stuff. If you want to wash it…I guess that’s up to you but I’m not sure if that’s the best option with the water waste (pulling hair out). I’m going to go with buying recycled aluminum foil from here on out and at least know that I’m doing something right. The recycled aluminum foil requires 95% less energy to make. If your local stores don’t sell recycled aluminum foils try using, If You Care or Green Feet.

Earth Friendly Valentines Day Gifts/Lessons

I have a four year old (almost) that informed me I was hurting the Earth because my car was running while I was getting him and his sister buckled up and things loaded. He told me I was making the Earth hot and not feel good. So you can see that my lessons in Global Warming are sinking in and starting to bite me in the butt. I told him he was right and I turned the car off until we were ready to go. Now Valentines day is around the corner and I'd like to continue my lessons on being Earth friendly. In our home we're continually talking about how mommy teaches others about being healthy and taking care of "Mother Earth" because of what I do for a living. My years of education and schooling (early childhood degree) tells me he needs to make a connection and be able to relate to all of this "green" talk.

February 14th in our home is a perfect time to show my little guy that he can use things we have in our home to make gifts for his friends and also a gift for daddy. Dad's a Valentine's baby so we also have a birthday to celebrate. Dusting off the old collection of teaching ideas I came up with a few great ideas I've used in the past and some new stuff. The idea behind this is to teach my son that we love the Earth so much that instead of throwing stuff in the trash and it sitting at the landfill we are going to recycle it and make something useful and give it to daddy and our friends and family to make them happy and smile.

Weathered, tried and true old Valentine Teaching Staples of Mine....

• Take my old greeting cards, wrapping paper and misc. craft supplies and make our own Valentines. This is fun because it teaches recycling but also practices fine motor skills for cutting.


• Use a tin can and cover it with old wrapping paper and wrap a pretty box around it for a pencil holder. Grandma's love this.


• Take an old picture frame and puzzle that's missing pieces. Glue the pieces around the frame and put a picture of the child in the frame. This is great to use with buttons too! Craft glue works best for this activity.

New and improved ideas from internet searches....

• Floppy Disk Picture Cube (Perfect because I never know what to do with these old things).


• Photo Busines Card Holder from a cassette tape holder (a must do for the dad or mom with a desk or office).

Just a few ideas of the upcoming holdiay and ones that we will be trying in my home this February. Teaching our kids about how to be Earth friendly and take care of the Earth often comes from conversation and example but the children need to actually make connections for the real learning to take place. I can tell you right now my son will be explaining to the recipients of his gifts that he was recycling and why!