Plastic Flowers, Bloom

We used to drink Vintage brand seltzer water in my family. I saved these 1-litre bottles for two years waiting for 'project critical mass' -- which in the early childhood business means enough for everyone to have a lot.

It took me a long time because we switched to making our own seltzer at home around the same time that many of our families at school switched also -- it is economical and more environmentally-friendly to reuse bottles than it is to keep buying water, even with bubbles! So I had to collect them here and there. This Summer, we finally achieved project critical mass and were able to pair our summer camp's goal to reuse and upcycle plastic and this collection to wonderful effect!

The children who attend our Tinkering at the Cooperative School are between 4 and 10 years old.  This week, the children are 5 through 8. Although the older children could cut the bottles in half, the younger children didn't have the hand strength to use the larger scissors necessary for the task. We cut theirs in half and then they were able to cut the petal shapes.

We used acrylic paints. I added an adhesive medium to ensure the acrylic would stick to the plastic. Tip: we found out the hard way that this medium allowed the paint to stick to EVERYTHING, clothes, chairs, floor, etc.

I really want to do this again during the school year, because these beautiful creations will go home after one short week. During the school year, I could create a display that would last for months and months. To do this, I will have to get creative to get back to project critical mass!

Fairytale Cities

Friends help friends hold the stencils.

One of the children donated Taschen's Grimm's Fairytales to the School in celebration of her "growing day". The book is beautiful, both inside and out, bound in purple cloth with sewn-in ribbon bookmarks.  The illustrations are stunning. Using the one on the back cover of the book as inspiration, the children used stencils and permanent markers to sketch out buildings and then used watercolors to bring them to life.

The watercolor layer.

Once the watercolor was dry, the children used gold (pictured below) and silver acrylic paint to fill in the backgrounds. This was a change in plan. I was actually going to ask the children to cut out the painted buildings to later collage them against painted sky backgrounds. The watercolors were so lovely, I talked to the artists about my idea and they voted on using the gold and silver acrylics instead. Gold and silver metallic paint, is after all, almost as good as glitter.

Backgrounds using gold and silver acrylics.

 The collected works.