Reusing things that you no longer want is a great way to introduce kids to green living. It is also a wonderful way to create some fun family craft projects. Paper towel tubes, magazines, unwanted CD disks, shoe boxes and even junk mail envelopes are materials that can be recycled into green crafts.

To make creating recycled crafts easy, gather a variety of items. Clean and sort your materials and then store them in containers by type so that they are easy to find when you are ready for a craft session.

Recycled creatures are a great way to use some of your supplies. You can encourage your kids to use their imaginations to make space aliens or animals that don't exist or you can work together to create elephants, giraffes and other zoo animals.

Another project that works well with recycled supplies is building a castle. This idea can easily be adapted to get kids who aren't excited about life in the Middle Ages. You may want to work together to build an entire village of little houses or a stable for a collection of horse figurines.

For older children, projects like creating handmade paper are a fun idea. All of that junk mail can really look pretty when it is torn up, turned into pulp and then pressed into sheets of new paper.