It’s important to exercise even when you can do the usual thing and play sports, so help the environment and get some fun jump time in with this lesson.

Recycled Jump Rope

INTRODUCE

• EXPLAIN: Now that we are at home, we may not have access to all the fun things to play with at recess that you had at school, but we can make our own and we can help the environment at the same time! Plastic, while helpful to humans, can be damaging to the environment. They can take about 500 years to decompose!
• INSTRUCT:
  1. Estimate how many plastic bags your family uses in one week. Then we will work together to calculate how many plastic bags our family uses in a year by multiplying our estimate by 52.
• DISCUSS:
  • What kinds of problems in our environment might all of these plastic bags cause?
• EXPLAIN: One way to help the environment is by repurposing and recycling a plastic bag. Today we are going to make a jump rope out of plastic bags.

EXPLORE

• INSTRUCT: (Check out the video below for a fun tutorial!)
  1. Grab about 12 plastic bags.
  2. Cut the handles off the plastic bags.
  3. Cut off the bottom.
  4. Tie four bags together by looping them through one another.
  5. Repeat this three times until you have three ropes of four bags.
  6. Add more bags to extend rope if need be.
  7. Duct tape the ropes together at one end.
  8. Braid the three ropes together.
  9. Duct tape the ends together to form the handles of your jump rope?
  10. Play with your jump rope!!

• DISCUSS:
  • What are some other ways you can reuse plastic bags?
  • What are some other “trash” items you can reuse?

CONNECT

• DISCUSS: What else can we make to have fun by being resourceful with the things we have around the house?