Contribute to your child's education and the earth's welfare at the same time! Teachers are always in need of odd items, especially day care, Headstart, Pre-K, Kindergarten, and elementary teachers, who often spend their own personal money in order to have more effective teaching tools.
To keep them from having to buy squirt dispenser bottles, I save and wash thoroughly all my squirt nozzle tipped catsup, mustard, mayo, syrup, hair color, shampoo, etc. bottles and send them to school with my granddaughter.
Lots of the bottles and/or their caps are colored, so they can be used to sort finger paints, etc. The bottles also make it possible to buy large refill size of such things as hand sanitizer and such, instead of buying even more plastic bottles. Plastic containers such as cole slaw, pimiento cheese and the like come in are always welcome, cleaned and with their lids, of course! Plastic shopping bags are perfect for sending home little clothes that have "accidents" in them, so send in all your bags.
Old Mylar balloons, wallpaper, paper towel rollers, gift wrap and such are welcome, too. What about buttons, twist ties, mismatched earrings for elementary classes learning to count? What about things to help demonstrate shapes? A hair roller is both a circle and a cylinder! The top and bottoms of frozen O.J. containers are perfect circles. Half a skein of knitting yarn? pass it along!
Before you throw anything away, think, could the kids' Sunday School class use this, or the nursing home residents, or the special education class, or the band members (old sponges are great for tires at car wash fund raisers)
Got ratty old blankets or towels? Your local animal shelter would love to have them! Leftover outgrown baby squeeze toys, too,make great chew toys for puppies waiting to be adopted (So do old one-legged or headless Barbies, by the way).
Never, ever think you have nothing to give. Just think of others all through your day, even washing dishes and throwing away trash can be an opportunity to give! And you can be all the difference in the world to somebody; even a cold, scared, lonely, furry little somebody!
Source: Remembering times when others made the difference for me
By Gloria Hayes from Darien, GA
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I am a Sunday school teacher. While I think this might be a well intended idea, I think it would be best to ask the recipient first before just passing stuff along. It is so easy to drown in class material and craft supplies from well meaning people. Now if you don't mind storing the stuff at your house until there is a request from the teacher, that would be different.
This was a good post. I believe in passing on any still useable items rather than having them buried in a landfill! Besides taking old towels and blankets to animal hospitals, they can also use your empty prescription bottles. I think it's good to ask teachers and Sunday school teachers what they need or ask if a specific item you are saving is what they could use rather than just send it in.
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