How to Recycle Your Child's School Supplies

It's back to school time and you are probably wondering what to do with your child's old school supplies. The best thing to do with these materials is to recycle them. I am going to share several ideas for recycling your child old school supplies.

If your child has a container full of broken crayons, you can reuse them by melting them into new crayons. First you have to peel off the crayon labels. Secondly, you have to break up the crayons into small pieces. Third, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lastly, arrange the crayon pieces into muffin tins and put them in the hot oven until the turn into a soupy mixture. For an easier clean up, use cupcake liners. You can use your imagination to create rainbow crayons or separate them by colors. These recycled crayons make for a fun party favor with a coloring book. My daughter really enjoys when we make these and she likes coloring with a round, unique shaped crayon.

As far as recycling workbooks and art projects your child made at school, they make excellent items for collages. You can have your child create collages about themselves, or make a game out of it by cutting out the alphabet and gluing it down on paper. You could have your child cut out all of the pictures with their favorite color on them. The possibilities for creating small art projects with the photos and glue are endless.

If you have old tests and school fliers, you can recycle those by creating a scrap paper box. Most of these old school papers have at least one blank side which makes them excellent to jot down grocery lists, or use them for your child to practice writing. You could also keep a scrap paper box with your child's crayons and have them draw on the back of the scrap paper. I often reuse scrap paper when I am printing out directions from the computer printer and don't want to waste a good piece of computer paper.

When the school year is over, your child may have books they do not read anymore or have outgrown. Consider donating these books to your local library. Most libraries accept book donations for their collections or to sell at a book sale to raise profits for the library. They would be happy to accept your donation.

As we head into back to school season, consider recycling and reusing your child's old school supplies with the ideas I have shared.