Earth Friendly Kid's Crafts: Part 2 - Kaleidoscopes

In my first Earth Day post, we made Wooly Bear caterpillars out of re-purposed egg cartons. In this post, we'll be making homemade kaleidoscopes out of toilet paper or paper towel rolls. It's fun project for older children (my 1 1/2 year old just tore it apart every time she got her hands on it - but the five year old loved it) and they can assemble it with minimal parental assistance.

Earth Friendly Kid's Crafts: Part 2 - Home Made Kaleidoscopes: 


You Will Need: 
One cardboard  toilet paper or paper towel tube  (sans paper)

1 sheet wrapping paper, construction paper etc.

1 piece aluminum foil

1 small circle of construction paper

1 piece wax paper

1 piece plastic wrap

hole punch

tape

scissors

2 rubber bands

small handful of beads, sequins, pom-poms etc.

To Assemble:


Cut a piece of wrapping paper or other decorative  paper and cover  the tube of cardboard, securing  it with tape.

Cut a small circle of construction paper just slightly larger than the opening of the tube and punch a hole in the center. This will become your eye piece. Tape it over one end of the tube.

Next, measure a length of aluminum foil just slightly shorter than the tube. Lay it out flat on a table, gently folding it into three even sections. Gently open the sections into the shape of a triangle, taping it in place. This will be your "mirror".  Slide it carefully into the tube taking care not to cram it in there. If you are having trouble fitting it, take it out , and make a smaller one.

Once the foil triangle is in, cut a small piece of plastic wrap and secure it over the open end with a rubber band, pushing it down slightly in the center to make a pouch. Fill the pouch with your beads, sequins and pom-poms. Cover the pouch with a small piece of wax paper securing it with a second rubber band.

                                         Viola! You have made your very own kaleidoscope!

Happy Earth Day - again!

Earth Friendly Kid's Crafts: Part 1 - Egg Carton Caterpillars

This Sunday, April 22, 2012 is Earth Day, and what a better way to celebrate than to create some earth friendly craft projects with our children. This will be a two - part post each containing one project that can be a quick 10 to 15 minute project delivering immediate self- satisfaction, or drawn out to a 45 minute project, depending on how much time you have, need or want to fill - all using things you can find in your recycling bin, or just lying around the house.

Earth Friendly Kid's Crafts: Part 1 - Egg Carton Caterpillars:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear

Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't a bear

Was He?

Well, we call them Wooly Bears, but no matter what you call those fuzzy little orange and black stripped caterpillars, they are not only fun to find crawling around outside, but also make a great earth- friendly craft for even the youngest children. 

You will need: 

1 egg carton (you can use a half dozen carton if only making one or two caterpillars)

non-toxic  yellow and black tempura paints

1 black or brown pipe cleaner

other embellishments (optional)

scissors

How to make them:
Using your scissors, cut a length of egg carton 3 eggs long and 1 wide for each caterpillar. Place the carton convex side up. Choose an end to be your "face" and poke two holes in the carton for the antennae. Paint the first section black, the second yellow, and the third black again  to create a stripped effect. Once the paint is dry, cut your pipe cleaner into two short pieces and feed one piece per hole, through the carton, bending the end up on the underside of the egg carton to secure it. Your caterpillar is now ready for hours of play, or years of being a seasonal decoration. Of course, if you wish to bedazzle your caterpillar or add goggly eyes, have at it !
 Happy Earth Day!

Instant Children's Garden

For years I have wanted to create an herb garden for my children, somewhere  they can not only dig in the dirt, but also where they can be a part of the entire process from seed to table. Each spring, I have high ambitions to finally create that garden, but get overwhelmed by the prospect of either digging, amending, fencing and planting a garden, or building a raised bed, especially with two very young children in tow. This year, however, we found the perfect solution. You'll have to forgive me for forgetting the name, but we found this wonderful instant raised bed garden at our local nursery. It is made from a plastic PVC snap together frame which slides inside of a black fabric sack. It assembles in literally five minutes and comes in various sizes. The wonderful thing, aside from immediate satisfaction, is that you can put it anywhere, reuse it year after year, and it's not permanent., so you can take it with you, move it, etc.

We chose a 72" long x 26" wide x 14' high model. It is the perfect height and width for  the children to both see over and reach across, being able to access the entire garden. It took five bags of soil to fill, and viola! we had a garden!  We chose a mixture of child friendly, edible, culinary and medicinal plant starts and seeds, planting half the garden with the starts, the other with the seeds. The planting went quickly and the children enjoying digging holes for the starts and sprinkling the seeds (though my idea of rows didn't quite work out). We'll have to see where everything ended up as the seedlings grow. Initially, we didn't fence it, but discovered that the cats had found it a few days in, so we installed a cheap but effective (and removable) fence.

After only two weeks, we had sprouts! It's now been three or four weeks since we planted and everything is really growing beautifully. The children are so excited to see the fruits of their labor already. We have big plans for out plants, some for use in recipes, some for medicine, some just for fun. We've listed the plants we chose below, and some ideas for other child-friendly plants you could use in your garden. We would have loved to plant all of them, but ran out of space. Oh well, there's always next year !

So get planting! We'll be posting the progress of our garden and the ideas, projects, medicines and recipes that we create with the bounty of our garden.

Here are the plants we chose:

Lavender              Thyme                     Oregano                 Catnip                 bare root Echinacea (purpurea)

Lemon Balm        Strawflower            Statice                    Hyssop              Calendula     Edible flower mix

Borage                Spearmint (planted elsewhere)                Chamomile


Other ideas:
Rosemary           Peppermint               Pineapple sage              Lemon Verbena           Comfrey

Sage                   Cilantro                     Dill                 Parsley             Strawberries