Recycled Gardens

What better way to greet Spring than with a beautiful garden? Look close at the papers and you will see we used cardboard food boxes, straws and lids to create a fun flower filled garden.





We started by talking about what we might find in a garden. Ground, flowers, fences, bugs and more. Then we took a look at our supplies. The children were excited to find cheerios and spongebob boxes. They were surprised we were using these instead of paper.



I admit, I am a craft supply hoarder. I save all our bright colored food boxes. I just fold them up and put them in a file. I also save lids. The straws are actually new, I didn't recycle used straws! I just thought it was a fun element to include.

Now the kids get busy. They created beautiful and thoughtful works!





You will need:
-Cardboard food boxes
-Blue construction paper
-Glue sticks and Elmer's glue
-Scissors
-Straws and lids

Some of the work we created:

Green Weaving

"How do you come up with your ideas?"

I get this question from parents, friends and even kids. I think A LOT. I think of ideas in the middle of the night, in the shower, in the car...and constantly re-think them. Sometimes I'll be inspired by something and try to think how I can do it. Sometimes I just get that "a-ha moment." Sometimes not all my ideas are "invented" by me, but I try to make them mine through how they are applied and taught. Like yesterday's project. I am not the first one to use sticks for looms, but I tried to come up with an original idea how to expand the idea.

Green Weaving was brought on by thinking about a class for St. Patrick's Day. Green. I had wanted to do a weaving project for a while and thinking green, I thought..."GREEN" as in RECYCLE! I do a lot of brainstorming in all of my processes.

I began saving cardboard boxes from packaged food items, odd bit of ribbons and bows off valentine chocolates, bubble wrap, plastic from tissue boxes...you get the idea. Then, I cut those items into strips. We used those things to weave through our loom.

I made the looms from branches in our backyard. Our kitchen was full of branches! I broke them into pieces and hot glued them together. Then I wrapped yarn around to use as the weft. They turned out so COOL! I made 40 looms hoping that would be enough and it was-barely!

Had quite a few kids and adults yesterday and they had a great time! A few parents even joined in the fun.

Everything is always set up in advance. I ended up putting our more items, I wish I had taken another pic. Oh well. You get the idea. Students each had a loom, weavable items and scissors. I encouraged them to walk around and get other items if there was something from another pile they wanted to use.



I took a few pictures of work alone with permission. These are from a 4 year old and a 6 year old. So much fun!




I had a few looms leftover and am excited to weave with the boys this week!