Fun Children’s Book Ideas For Teaching Kids About The Three Rs – Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

Children always want to learn from us, and there are many ways to encourage this. One is to show them by example of how to behave in the world, and another is by talking to them about things that are important to us, like preserving the planet through home conservation efforts like the Three Rs – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

A great way to open age-appropriate discussions about the Three Rs is to incorporate them into storytime if your child is very young and discuss the content as you go.

For older kids, read the book yourself and then go over some of the ideas that you think are most feasible for your family and included the kids in participating. If you really get their attention, they may actually want to read the book themselves to come up with even more ideas for how to conserve at home.

I found the following assortment of books that I really like for their content and various levels of age-appropriate language in getting ideas across to kids from kindergarten to all the way to middle school.

WHY SHOULD I RECYCLE? – by Jen Green

This is a great introductory book to read with very young children. It has very easy language and has great illustrations that show how people recycle.

The story is about a little girl and her family that learn about recycling by noticing her teacher, Mr. Jones, recycling outside of his home. She watches him carry out a box of cans and asks him what he’s doing.

There is a great segue where Mr. Jones says that he will discuss it more with her class. The next day opens with a discussion about how garbage contains a lot of useful things that can be recycled or used again.

Mr. Jones then takes the class to a recycling center (which is illustrated) and shows the students what happens to bottles, cans, plastic, clothes, and paper products.

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Little Green Books’ Online Site Helping Kids Save Earth With Free Webgames, Prints & Great Books

Little kids naturally love the environment. They love to go outside and do things like ride their bikes, go to the playground, or anything else that involves getting some fresh air.

Their love of spending time outdoors is also a great way to teach them to love taking care of the environment.

For the little ones – just starting pre-school and up to a few years older – this is a great time to introduce them to entertaining children’s books and play activities about preserving the environment.

I came across a great site from Simon and Schuster called Little Green Books that has wonderful resources for teaching young children – in very easy to understand ways – about things like:

• Recycling and repurposing stuff around the house.
• Gardening and learning how things grow.
• Endangered species and their habitats.
• Global warming in kid-friendly ways.

The site has a lot of fun features. Among them are three free interactive games that teach about recycling, endangered animals, and gardening.

The first game is called Recycle Away!, and this is how you play:

• There are three recycling bins with the labels – cans and bottles, plastic and glass, and paper and cardboard.
• The player has to use the mouse to put five items into their proper bins – they are: a newspaper, a cardboard box, a glass bottle, a plastic bottle, and a can. When the player does it correctly, they win!

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