Today’s guest is Velma, from a A Smeddling Kiss. I met Velma on Twitter and she was gracious enough to fill in for me today... She is one amazing mama!
Velma lives with her family on Cape Cod, where she attempts to blend in with the normal folk. She stinks at writing these bio things because it takes a large amount of fancy words to convey the complexity of her life, and 8 years of motherhood has made her forget all her fancy words. With has a son on the autistic spectrum, a husband who spends most of his waking hours fighting cancer, and a daughter who is like most 8 year old girls (charming and delightful to everyone but her mother), she’s making it up as she goes along, just like you.
As moms, we all care about the environment. We teach our kids to conserve electricity, consume wisely, and recycle. Newspapers, cardboard, cans, glass, plastic – at my house it all sits in our garage waiting for a convenient day to take a trip to the recycling center. The pile can get pretty big before a trip becomes necessary, and if you have the same situation, I have a suggestion for you.
It’s not an original idea, but why not give it a little extra home recycling with your kids? Call it “pre-cycling,” if you will. When my kids come to me and tell me that they are sick of games and Playdoh and all their toys are booooring, I know it is time to check out the treasures waiting in the garage.
The recycling corner has come to my aid many times. When our Girl Scout troop was having one last meeting at the end of the school year and none of us moms could muster up the energy for a big project, it was the giant stack of newspapers that came to the rescue. All it took was a couple rolls of masking tape, and 8 little girls spent a fun afternoon making hats and props and statues out of newspaper. My personal favorite was the pirate ensembles, complete with hats, spyglasses, and even a parrot:
Now it’s become a routine for my family. When my daughter’s friends come over, hopefully there will be some cardboard boxes to make a clubhouse to hang out in. Lunch tastes so much better alfresco, doesn’t it?
For my son, the recycling pile is a great source of experimentation. A bowl of water and some shredded paper and bits of cardboard to watch fall apart is his idea of fun. We’ve filled small water bottles with sand and juggled with them. Soda cans make an excellent noise when you bang them around in a storage tub, and then you can stomp on them! It’s heavenly for little boys to be allowed to smash things, isn’t it?
With a few simple items, you can try some really cool stuff. Electric scissors make short work of cutting cardboard. Masking tape is great, and one of our favorite accessories for recycling fun is one of these cool cyclone tubes:
Really, the possibilities are endless. It’s a valuable lesson in conservation and creativity for the kids, and with so many families in financial difficulty these days, it’s cheap as well. Since I try to get the most out of my purchases, why not try to wring as much fun out of the stuff that it comes packaged in as well? It’s a nice thought that when all the fun has been sucked out of the creations, they can be disassembled and head off to the recycling center well used and ready to become something else.
For more from Velma, visit her at A Smeddling Kiss, where she blogs about her complex life.
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Those sounds like tons of fun! What a great idea and I know the clubhouse was a huge hit!