T is for....Trash Art! Eco art with pre schoolers.....

So, Sunday was Earth Day.  We were inside of a Tae Kwon Do studio from about 12:45-4:35pm that day and the only Earth friendly thing I happened to do, was water my plants.  We stay pretty Earth friendly around this house.  We recycle, we buy organic where we see fit, we turn off the water when we brush our teeth, and we own energy saving appliances.  But there is always more you can do. 
In our family, we love to do collages.  Are you a collage creating family.  The big kids used to be really into it, G is not as into as they were so my collage box is dwindling.  I used to keep a pretty stocked lunchbox, full of clippings from magazines.  Eyeballs, faces, smiles, letters, words, animals, you name it....it had everything of every color.  The kids would grab a piece of construction paper and collage away.  When they were able to read, the collages got even better, they would use the words int he box and spell out all kinds of great poems that they didn't know they were creating. 
Because we live in a small town and Earth Day isn't some big festival inducing holiday in our area, I asked G's pre school teacher, The Always Amazing Mrs. Holly, if I could come and help her with an Earth Day craft.  She said yes, of course and I started saving some things from the recycle bin and putting them away for our craft day.   (By the way, let me just say, I am still in full on denial that G will not be in her school next year.  She is awesome!)  Today was our Earth Day craft day so I headed on up to the school with my bag o' trash.  I did drive, just in case you had a picture of me walking down the road as a bag lady.  No offense, bag ladies.
This is so fun to do with kids of any age and you can totally throw in facts about the Earth and keeping the Earth clean while they are gluing down everything in sight. 
You only need trash, glue, cardboard or poster board for the base of your art project, paint (optional), crayons (optional). It's pretty much a trash free-for-all.  We dumped our bag full of goodies on the ground while Mrs. Holly organized everyone a bit, which is much better than what I would have done, they would have probably had a Fight Club arranged by the end.  They each grabbed a few recyclable treasures to work with and headed to their space to turn into artists. 
After ripping and tearing, cutting, and gluing they got to paint with our toilet paper roll stamps.  Which is super fun and takes all of 2 seconds to make. 

Our treasures...

I love the concentration that comes from creativity

R helped me out with the "Eco art lesson"

Some of their masterpieces

All of the kids really enjoyed it and they liked being able to explain the things they already knew about helping the Earth. 
This would be a nice, creative way to do an Earth Day lesson.  Doing it outside would be even better. 

One more post for the A to Z blogging challenge!