Readathon: Hour 9: What Can You Do With an Old Red Shoe?

What Can You Do With an Old Red Shoe? A Green Activity Book About Reuse by Anna Alter

Recycling is big. As it should be. This is a book filled with ideas of how to reuse items that are generally thrown away, including a flip-flop, tin cans, old crayons, wrapping paper, toys, and, from the title, old red shoes.

The directions are clear and easy to follow. The end products are good choices for children, including stamps, new crayons, planters, and candles.

One bit from the book:

"What Can You Do With a Flip-Flop?

1. First, Sarah cleans the sand and dirt off her flip-flop and cuts the foot straps halfway down.
2. Then, she turns it over, centers the cookie cutter where the top strap intersects the bottom of the shoe, and traces the shape using the marker.
3. Next, her mom uses scissors to help her cut out the shape she traced.
4. When they are finished cutting, Sarah paints the bottom of her flip-flop and presses it onto a piece of paper.
Now Sarah has a new stamp for making art!"


There are additional tips for reusing and recycling items in the back of the book.

Each suggestion is featured with a short poem that leads into the project. All the pages are heavily illustrated to make clear the steps of the process.

This book would be great as a lead into a lesson about how to recycle.

Comments from children:
About half were seven and half were eight. There were nine girls and three boys.
The pictures looked cool, one girl told us.
One girl said, “I liked on every page how it told you to make things.”
One boy liked the ideas.
“People might check it out a lot so they could keep making things.”
“I would check it out a lot.”
“I liked it, but some of the pictures did not have enough details.”
5, 5, 5, 2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 0, 5, 5