Getting ready for Earth Day!!!

Earth Day is tomorrow so my house has been busy doing recyclable crafts. I have to admit that as a student teacher, I'm asking my own kids to do them before thinking about adding them to my future curriculum. (Is that smart or bizarre? I can't decide.) Anyways, moving onto the crafts...

Since I'm planning on having my own classroom one day and currently I have an infant with tons of empty formula cans, I decided to recycle those cans to hopefully put them to use in my future classroom.

This was my first time using Mod Podge. My dad is a pretty crafty person and assured me that I would be fine but it was not easy to get the wrinkles out. If anyone has any suggestions for this, I would love to hear them.
Even with the occasional wrinkle, I did a pretty good job and even got carried away with the whole project.

I think they look cool.

Also in celebration of Earth day, my kids got involved by making coffee filter Earths. The kids got around the table and I gave each of them a paper plate and a coffee filter. I put a pile of washable markers in the middle. Since we were making the Earth, I gave them blues, greens, and a few yellows.

They had a blast. Bulldozer (my 2 year old) was acting as if it was his birthday or something. He giggled the entire time while occasionally missing his coffee filter completely and coloring his hands. After they colored as much as they wanted, I took their paper plate and sprayed it with water. About 4 sprays worked well.

After I sprayed, we watched the colors spread slowly across the coffee filter. Then I set them out to dry.

I let them dry completely. It took most of the evening. We just left them alone until after dinner so it was about 3 hours total. After they dried, we glued them to black construction paper and wrote their names on the bottom of the page.

I made Ballerina's for her since she's only 3 months old. LOL! I have to say that I think Peanut's Earth turned out the best. It was full of vibrant colors and in fact, all he did was color very thick in the center before getting tired of coloring but the water spread the colors beautifully.

I have about 3 more Earth day activities planned and we have 2 days to complete them so I"ll be adding more.

**In other news, I still have yet to complete any of my weekly goals but I don't have any classes on Friday so maybe I'll at least get one or two completed then. We'll see!**

Carole