From paper plants to paper-mache animals… discover 5 beautiful creations to do at home with recycled paper. Spend some quality time with your children creating these beautiful objects.
This health emergency due to Coronavirus is really challenging us. As a matter of fact, it’s not that easy being in a lockdown; it’s even harder when you have children around you who get easily bored. We should limit the time our children spend with technology. Of course, it’s really useful to spend some time but it can also increase the stress level. But don’t worry, we have something for you. Read this article and find how to keep your children busy with some entertaining activities.
There’s no need to buy anything. Just use recycled paper from old newspapers and replace the glue with water and flour. Here you are 5 games to do with recycled paper.
Let your imagination run wild and find again positivity by having fun with your family.
1. Paper plants to decorate your home
Where there are plants, there’s oxygen. Not only ’cause they produce it, but also because they make a room more colorful and welcoming. So, why don’t you create some decorations made of paper plants? Fortunately, The Mart – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto gives us some ideas.
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- foto via Pagina FB MART (https://www.facebook.com/martrovereto/)
And if you run out of green, don’t worry. Make your flowers unique and give them every color you want!
2. Paper Mache Animals
Whether you feel inspired by the Irish artist Tom Campbell, who occupies European cities with his works to make people aware about animals rights or whether you just want to create artistic masks of animals, such as foxes, gorillas…follow this 3 steps:
- Cut the newspapers into stripes
- Immerse the strips in the water and add some flour (in equal proportion)
- Place the stripes next to each other
You can do as many layers as you want. Wait for the first layer to dry and then go on. As a structure, use some balled paper to create the dog or a cardboard cutout from some packaging to create the animal masks. Here you’ll find more information.
3. Create an artistic collage about the Recycle
For this game, you need some old magazines. The more, the better: from mode magazines to the design or travel ones. Once you’ve read them, don’t waste their paper.
This idea aims to teach children how to recycle.
Take 4 sheets on which you write on the top: organic, plastic packaging, paper, non-recyclable waste. Each sheet will correspond to a type of waste. Then, start cutting objects from magazines. Use some glue or some water mixed up with flour to stick the pictures together. Everyone has to put each picture in the right sheet.
- In the organic waste section, you should put food images such as fruit, pizza, pasta.
- Put the pictures of product packaging in the plastic section.
- In the paper’s section put books and copybooks. But remember to tell the kids that we don’t usually throw them away, but it’s just for the game.
- In the last section, put everything you can’t recycle, like old shoes or clothes. Remember that we can recycle almost everything, so teach the kids that we throw away only what we can use anymore.
Do this activity next to your kids, and tell them where to put each picture. Help them if they get something wrong.
4. Create toilet roll characters
We’re talking about something that everyone owns, without any doubts. Don’t waste your toilet roll, use them to create animals or also your favorite characters from a movie.
On youtube you can find so many tutorials about creations with the toilet roll. Here you are some of them:
Star Wars Toilet Roll
Animals Toilet Roll
Ananas Toilet Roll
5. Play Battleship
Battleship is a really fun game to play. Choose an opponent and start the game here.
Kids love this game. If you don’t want to use aggressive vocabulary linked to the war and you want to teach to your kids what peace really means, change the regular way of playing it: there will be volcanoes and no more ships. Instead of ”hit and sunk” there will be ”hit and lava”. As a result, the main aim will be to find out all the erupting volcanoes.
6. Recycled Paper Origami
Last but not least, a classic: origami.
The word “origami” comes from the Japanese language. As a matter of fact, “Ori” means folded and “kami” means paper.
Start with something easier and then, as you get better, do some more difficult.
All you need to create some beautiful origami is recycled paper and a little bit of patience. It will be a little bit challenging but the final result won’t disappoint you.
Learn to play with your creativity and free your artistic side.
Long live recycling!
Cover Image: Photo by Alex on Unsplash
