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Showing posts from April, 2016

Aaron's Earth Day gift to his classmates! Let the wildflowers bloom!

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I know I've shared before how my children love Earth Day, and they love crafts!  Especially my youngest son Aaron.  He's the resident artist.  You could buy him crayons, tablets, paints, anything artsy, during every shopping trip and he'd be perfectly happy. Well for Earth Day, after having made recycled paper with their Bill Nye kit, he decided he wanted to make it for his class.  Then we read you could add flower seeds into it! So that's what we did.  They simply have to plant the biodegradable paper, keep it moist, and watch it grow!  We printed out a cute quote from "The Lorax" with planting instructions and put it all in a ziplock bag.  He will hand it out on Earth Day! You can easily make recycled paper.  Just Google "easy paper making" or something similar.  You really don't need much. And it's a cheap craft!   Essentially you need: Paper [newspaper, tissue paper, construction paper, copy paper] Big bowl water food c

Lessons from Bill Nye for my own science guys!

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We love Earth Day in our home!  Especially when the boys can get messy. learn something new, and help save the trees! All week Aaron has been reading me his library book The Lorax.  And we've been watching the old school 1972 cartoon of the book. They both really get the idea of speaking for nature because "trees have no tongues".  Our good friends Brooke and Mitch gave the boys a Bill Nye Paper Recycling Factory.  So this past week, we worked on recyling old paper into new!     The process is easy, but time consuming.  And you can do so much with it. During this first run we recycled  a lot of our old tissue paper we've had put up from past gifts.  They were perfect colors, green and white! From making the pulp, to grinding, to using deckles, to drying, the boys LOVED it! And we talked about what else we can do next time we make a batch.  We're going to make biodegradable wildflower paper! Making up the pulp and adding in a wildflower seed mix during the dec

Celebrating Earth Day "Month"! Nightlights, robots, & recycled paper.

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I love Earth Day!  I've loved every since I heard about it and stumbled upon an Earth Day Birthday celebration Almost 25 years ago! At the time I was living in Dayton, Ohio and often went Downtown to shop at the now defunct department stores.  [Aww memories, but that is another post.] One April day, as I headed to Elder Beerman, going through the Court Yard, I noticed this festival.  Unsure of what it was I stopped at the various booths to check out what was going on. To be honest, this was the first time I ever even realized that we needed to care for the earth.  Sad but true.  The movement was gaining big momentum back then [It started in 1970], and I credit that festival for helping to open my eyes.  I have to admit I'm not doing as much as I could, or as much as I have in the past.  But maybe it's time to revisit some of the things I used to do.  I know as I've grown older, learned more about my own ancestral roots, and had children, I've realize