What I'm Collecting for Preschool

As the new school year continues to get going, I find myself looking ahead to the months ahead and all of the fun projects that the Little People will be doing .

Some of these are projects that I have never tried before, and some are repeat projects.  I decided this past Saturday (as I was straightening things in the garage) that one could tell what some of these projects are by looking at what I'm collecting as the year goes by.

Two of those things are plastic lids and cardboard boxes.

The boxes are so that we can do box sculptures again in the spring like we did last year:

However, I am making a change and am only collecting boxes that are no bigger than cereal boxes.  In fact, I'm only keeping the smallest cereal boxes.  This will keep the box sculptures smaller and more in-control.  The Little People can still use lots of boxes, but it won't results in such tall, tall (and hard to keep standing) sculptures.

 The other thing I'm collecting is plastic bottle caps off all sizes.  There are just a myriad of things you can do with these, as seen here in my Pinterest "Plastic Caps" board.  One of the projects I'm looking forward to the most are these Bead Strands, where you basically gather all sorts of leftover plastic caps and flowers and beads and marker lids  - kind of like a "leftover item serve out".  You  poke holes in anything that doesn't have a one.  Then you left the kids string them on ribbon and you come out with the most wonderful up-cycled suncatchers.

Here is a clip from my tutorial "Decorating Your Classroom Tree", which tells all about how to do this project:

Actually, I think this is one of the best collections that I could have:  saving up things that we would ordinarily put in the our recycling bin to made into something wonderful.   Cheap, resourceful and fun all in one package.