Creating Gardens from Recycled Material
In honor of the new spring blooms that are likely to begin popping up now that it's spring, try this earth-friendly project we discovered at Laugh, Paint, Create! Students will love 'cultivating' their gardens of recycled flowers and plants!
Supplies You'll Need
- Recycled materials {cardboard food boxes, old magazines, drinking straws, container lids, bottle tops, plastic spoons, plastic cups, etc.}
- Blue construction paper or card stock
- Kids scissors
- Elmer's® school glue and glue sticks
Erin, creator of the blog and designer of the project, suggests having a brainstorming session before beginning the project, inviting students to think about all the things they might find in a garden {flowers, vines, earthworms, bugs, butterflies, a fence, gardening tools, etc.} Then, armed with their recycling bin materials, invite your students to create away!
Considerations
- Add dimension to flowers by creating layers of different types of materials {cardboard boxes, magazine pages, etc.} and ending with a fun bottle cap or top.
- The heads of plastic spoons look strikingly similar to flower petals - invite your students to attempt a plastic spoon 'flower'.
- Demonstrate how to cut a plastic cup to make a flower shape like these at Family Corner.
- Not all flower petals, leaves, plants, etc. are the same shape so invite your students to incorporate several different types {five petal flowers, six petal flowers, pointed leaves, curved leaves, etc.}
