Earth Day - recycling

April is dedicated to paying more attention to our planet, Earth. 22 April is Earth Day so we did some activities both in English and Hungarian to "celebrate OUR Earth" - as E. has put it modestly.

While we were painting, drawing and selecting we used plenty of special phrases. I'll put together a word list concerning Earth Day and recycling in one of my upcoming Earth related posts.

 But now, in this post, here comes some selective rubbish collection fun:

Preparation:

1. I prepared 5 boxes (4 shoe boxes and a blue, IKEA box)
2. Then I printed, coloured (you can print the bins on coloured paper) and stuck the bins with different labels (plastic, glass metal, paper) on the side of the shoe boxes.
3. I selected some rubbish items from our recycling bins:
   - beer cans
   - tins
   - a milk and juice carton
   - scraps of paper
   - magazines
   - a glass olives jar
   - a cider bottle (glass)
   - plastic bags
   - bottle tops and plastic bottles
   - yogurt cups (etc.)
4. I placed the rubbish in the blue box.
5. I let E. do the selecting.

First, she was checking what is what, which went with several questions.

She didn't really know how to make a difference between the different materials although she had been helping sort out the rubbish in our everyday life.

So I asked her a few questions and showed her the actions at the same time:
- Can you crumple it up? (And I was crumpling up a piece of paper)
- Can you tear it? (tearing a piece of the magazine's cover)
- Is it flexible? (I was smashing a yogurt cup)
- Is it hard? (knocking my finger against the glass)

She was copying me while I was showing her crumpling, tearing or smashing.

And she got the hang of it:

I also mentioned to her that we need to flatten the cartons so she tried it.

Having finished we took the boxes to our selective bins and put them in their designated places.

E. was really excited about recycling and rubbish selection. Before dinner she wanted to watch "recycling videos". And she did. Here they are:

Peppa Pig - recycling

Betsy's Happy Earth Day

Mother Goose Club - Earth is our home

What is recycling for children? - HooplaKidz

Happy Earth Day, Everybody!