Crafting materials

[skippy]

I've been collecting a lot of recylables to use for crafts and activites. I have a lot of plastic formula lids! babyfood jars, lids, tops of all kinds, tiny boxes.

What craft or activity are you most proud of (from your junk pile)?

[Inspired by Reggio]

My crew one summer was 'obsessed' with the Jillian Jiggs book where instead of cleaning up her room she starts making box costumes ~ it turned into a whole 'project' for them .... we had a 'a mother knows she can tell by the tip of the toes' contest where we took photos of their feet and had the parents 'guess' which toes belonged to which child and the kids made a 'prize' for the parent who got the most toes right in addition to their own kid but the most fun we had was we collected 'big boxes' from the grocery stores and than other smaller boxes and we made 'robot costumes' that they actually could 'wear' for play .... they spent a WEEK creating the box costumes and painting and decorating them and most of the summer wearing them for play both inside and outside ~ it spiraled wear they used recycled materials to make a whole 'robot colony' with pets and babies and so forth in the dramatic play ~ it was awesome!

We have also made some pretty awesome wind chimes and reflectors for the backyard with recycled materials like silverware, old CD and DVDs, beads, broken jewellery and so forth.

I still have on display in my playroom a 'purple collage' from the year I had ALL GIRLS who were obsessed with purple and they collected things from home ~ magazine pictures, bits and bobs of ribbon, lace, wrapping paper and well anything purple they could find to add to the collection and we glued it onto a heavy piece of card stock so that every piece of the paper was 'covered' ... they were so proud of this thing and it took a week of collecting and them bring in and adding to the collage to 'complete it'.

I personally love 'creations' where they revisit it over and over until they perfect it in their eyes because they are invested in the 'fun' of creating it .... collecting things to 'add' to it and so forth so they have that pride and ownership in it.

[Momof4]

One time we made castles with tp rolls, tons of them. They were 3 tp rolls high and I used duct tape to make the castles silver and pictures of kings and queens and knights taped onto each wall. It could have been a lot better, but hey, these are toddlers! If I get a piece of styrofoam or cardboard in some packaging I save it. Everything comes in handy eventually if you have the storage space.