Forever Young Pintrosity

My roommate pinned this image ages ago and I immediately fell in love with it. Seriously. Thought about it day and night. I even debated getting it as a tattoo. 

Pinterest

 A couple weeks ago I ran across this tutorial on Pinterest and immediately knew what I wanted to do. So I attempted to replicate the forever young image with glue on an old Hanes tee.

Life of Charmings

As usual, my eager self could not possibly wait to gather all of the appropriate supplies so I used what was on hand. The glue that I used is Elmers clear glue, not gel... but it still worked. But when I dyed the fabric it was too faint to see the image. I didn't even take pictures because it didn't work well.

But I love this idea and want to try it again with the gel glue. Have you tried this fun DIY? What worked for you?

Recycle Crayons

I have seen these crayon creations all over the web. Working at a daycare center I had access to many tiny barely usable pieces of crayons. With a bunch of help from tiny hands I sorted out the smaller, undesirable crayons. We peeled off any paper pieces that remained, although many did not have paper at this point.

Next, I decided to chop up the crayons into the smallest pieces possible. (I simply used a pair of scissors but I’m sure you could use a knife). If you decide to not cut them or cut them into slightly larger pieces, it will still work, you will just have larger swirls of that specific color. 

Then we combined the colors we wanted, keeping with the general color family. After the first batch we began mixing colors a little more for a wider variety. I added white to almost every color combination simply because I like the look of the white swirls in the new crayons.

I purchased a baking pan from the dollar store and placed the desired amount of crayons in the tins. I filled them less than halfway so that they wouldn’t be too large.

If you search online you will see many different recommendations for the temperature and the length of time. I had time to kill so I simply set the oven at 300 and set the timer for 15 minutes.

I highly suggest filling each individual tin with roughly the same amount of crayon shavings so that they will ‘cook’ evenly.

*Once they have melted they will NOT look like that pretty swirl, it will look like one melted color. (As the picture above looks). This is because the oils separate. The swirl will be on the bottom of these new crayons. This will also be the side that you should color with.*

After a few uses, these have been a hit but have been somewhat hard to use with precision. The older children tend to just scribble with them so that they can see the variety of the colors. The shape is somewhat awkward for them to hold but they truly enjoy their new crayons and definitely use them more than they had used the tiny pieces!

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DIY Swim noodle poppers

Another SUPER simple and CHEAP activity for kids. When I made a 'kiddie car wash' (CHECK IT OUT HERE!) at the beginning of the summer and was trying to come up with creative ways to use the remainder of the swim noodles a co-worker of mine suggested this wonderful idea she had once seen in Family Fun. I found a tutorial here.

Family Fun

All you have to do is slice the swim noodles into pieces about 2 inches thick. Then simply quarter them.

Family Fun

The kiddos have been having an absolute blast with these. We begun playing with them by trying to make them into a bucket but it quickly became a game of tagging each other by popping them towards each other. Some were able to squeeze them between their thumb and pointer finger but some with smaller hands found that difficult. We learned it was a little easier for those to cup the popper in their hand so that the top is under all of their finger tips and the bottom rests against the bottom of their hand (wrist). Then simply squeeze together and let them fly!

I have to admit that I enjoy these too. The day we made these I took some to Bloomington with me and promptly starting attacking Kevin with him. He was less than thrilled but I sure do enjoy them!

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Kiddie Car Wash

I guess I should have posted this a little sooner... now that the summer is winding down there will be less time to put this to good use. Regardless, this is a cheap and wonderfully exciting alternative to sprinklers and water play for the kiddos.

Below is an image taken from the Family Fun website outlining the necessary pieces for the car wash. I made my own changes (I decided the pool noodle on top was unnecessary and the stop/go signs in the front would only delay the fun to be had!) Click here for the link to the website for a wonderful description on exactly how to make this simple sprinkler system.

Family Fun
I also found a fairly detailed video from Menardes that was helpful in the building process. 

I am definitely not the engineering type but this was a REALY simple project. 

Some notes from my experience: 

- I did not feel like it was necessary to purchase a pvc cutter for one project. A saw worked fine. Yes, it was more time consuming but not overly... and I'm a very impatient person so if I think a saw will do, you will most likely as well.

- The video says to use lawn chair webbing but I decided to use an old plastic tablecloth we had lying around at work instead. It has held up through various uses.

- BUT the kids typically end up just pushing them to the side - once it is wet it sticks to their skin and some view it as an annoyance. 

- Although the added pieces (sponges, pool noodles, and tablecloth slits) add to the aesthetic of the 'car wash' they are definitely not necessary. I believe the kids would still be 100% happy without the added flair. 

- I only drilled 2 holes per section of the pvc because I was a little worried about the water pressure - it seems to be working fine (I don't even turn the hose up all the way) so I may add more

- I also kept the holes to the bottom half of the 'car wash' (mainly because the majority of the kids at the day care center are younger and therefore smaller) but it would also work great if there are holes at the top half as well

Probably the most important note: 

I did not use the pvc cement. We will be storing this inside and I wanted to be able to easily take it apart if at all possible. We tested it out without the pvc cement and it has held up for the past two months. We have also kept this outside for the past two months and it has held together well. 

Extra fun: I cut the swim noodles I found at the dollar store in half for the 'scrubbers' in the middle of the car wash. We have used the extras for SO many things! I cut them into slices and we made 'sunglasses' out of them by attaching two together with pipe cleaners. These also happen to have a flower shape to them so we have used them as stamps for painting. We also made poppers out of the swim noodles. Check those out RIGHT HERE!


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Milkjug Igloo

We finally finished our extensive summer project! It took about two/three weeks to collect all of the jugs and construct the igloo.

*I suggest asking for both gallon and half gallon jugs when started your milk jug drive- we didn't use too many half gallons but they were still necessary. Also, save any extra lids.... some jugs were brought to us without the lids and I wanted them to have lids.

We set out to complete this Igloo in the middle of May. Luckily, we go through a LOT of milk at the day care center and have lots of families that were extra helpful and brought in their empty jugs. 

With the help of our families and our community we quickly collected the 

295 gallon jugs (and 6 half gallon jugs) that were used. 

I originally started this project with no idea how large it would be. As much as I would love being able to cram our entire class in there I settled on only making it fit about 4-6 people. So I taped out the area that I wanted and glued the first row together. 

I decided to model my igloo off of another I had seen online. (Find their tutorial here. They have a video that may be able to explain the process better than I will). 

*Make sure that all of the milk jugs are completely clean!! We learned quickly that spoiled milk turns a funky shade of neon green... (not an experiment that we wanted to learn but interesting nonetheless). Wash them well and then make sure they are dry before putting the lids on. 

I decided to use the hot glue to secure the lids onto the milkjugs. We have some sneaksters that would probably end up hiding things in them and it would become impossible to get out... But others may wish to not glue them done. It would be a lot of fun to switch the caps around or make designs inside after the igloo is complete.

This site used hot glue to glue their milkjugs in pairs: two jugs would be glued with the handles inside (together) and the other would have the handles on the outside. Check out the pictures below

(Handles inside)

(Handles outside)

We then alternated the pairs (inside, outside, inside, and so on...) until they made the way around the circle. 

Then glue the next layer on top. I tried to get at least one milk jug less than the previous row but did not always succeed (hence the half gallon jugs). 

Once I decided that the rows were tall enough for the children to crawl through I began going across the doorway. I was worried there would not be enough support but once it was finished I found it to be very supportive. (Keep in mind I completely COVERED the area with hot glue). 

Here is what I thought would be our finished product! But we had LOTS left over so I made a little arch over the front. 

Below is an image of the actual finished project. 

It's so colorful inside!

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