Welcome to Australia!

(Image Source)

This month we are headed down under for lots of eco-friendly fun!  That's right, in honor of Earth Day later this month, we are going green for all of April (and beyond too!).  We'll be recycling, reusing, repurposing and more!

Rather than weekly themes, we will be incorporating crafts and activities that relate to spring, Easter and Earth Day into our exploration of Australia.  We hope you'll come along with us as we jump into the Outback!

Books:
                    

Fort ReUse

Daddy got in on the Earth Week festivities and helped repurpose some boxes into a fort.  It's amazing how much joy two boxes and some duct tape can bring.

Reduce, Recycle, Reuse

We have made a few crafts over the last few days reusing objects that might otherwise have been thrown away.  The first is the super easy newspaper hat.  Just a few folds to a sheet of newspaper and:

We also made some litter bugs out of an egg carton and scraps from previous crafts.  I cut the egg carton into quarters and then punched holes in both sides of each cup.  Eva threaded pipe cleaners through the holes to serve as legs and antennae for the bugs.  (Great for working on those fine motor skills!)

She decided she wanted an ant and a butterfly.  The ant got three pipe cleaners for legs and another for the antenna and then Eva drew on the face.

For the butterfly I helped thread the pipe cleaners so that they made an X and then we covered them with leftover tissue paper from the earth we made earlier this week.  Eva decorated the wings with markers and added some googly eyes for good measure.

Some other crafts we have done in the past have also reused objects destined for the curb, including our oatmeal canister flower,

the sheep with packing peanut fur,

and the T-rex made from an old cereal box and magazine scraps.