Monthly Archives: February 2014

Creating a whole world out of recycled materials – Dollhouse

From Sophie’s school:

On the first day back from our school break, one of the Green Roomers remarked during meeting, “We could make a dollhouse!” and the response from everyone was so enthusiastic that we began working to make one the very next day. The children were able to come up with quite an extensive list of things that they wished to make for the house including a swimming pool, staircases and musical instruments. Everyone who wanted to create something for the house made a plan and we helped them figure out what materials they would need to make their ideas a reality. In keeping with our “green” goals in the Green Room, we are using recycled and reused materials – cardboard boxes from our snack, cardboard tubes, bottle caps from our lunches, samples of tiles, fabric scraps and wood pieces. The house is really coming to life.

Sophie holds up a book she made for the dollhouse – just the right size!

Sophie with her “garden”

Violet and Sophie next to the “sleeping” people in bathing suits.

The dollhouse so far!

Making paper

Leave a reply

From Sophie’s school:

The Green Roomers love using paper. The children use it for drawing, making cards and letters, making collage and even costumes. The children love paper so much that we were using up a huge stack of paper in just one or two days and a lot of paper was going to waste. We talked about how to conserve our paper so we could make the paper last a whole week. We started to save scrap paper and used it for projects like our Matisse-inspired collages. But we still were using a lot of paper.

Then – uh oh! – no more paper in the art closet. That very same day Jamie, a teacher from the Blue Room, came by our classroom to borrow some colored paper from the Green Room, but we had used our paper supply down to the littlest scraps. Generously, all the Green Roomers seemed more concerned about the Blue Roomers – what would they do without paper? The Green Roomers immediately sensed an opportunity to help – how can we get more paper for the Blue Room?

We discussed the situation at meeting time. Some suggested rationing one piece of paper per child, but others brought up the point that some art projects, such as making a book, required more than one piece paper. Sure, we could order more from the art store…. but where does the art store get the paper? The children knew that the paper was delivered on trucks, but where did the trucks get the paper? Leila P. described a place where wood is turned into paper – a paper factory! But where does the wood come from? Trees! We read a few books that detailed how trees are turned into paper. But as Vivian noted, “We don’t have axes to cut down trees so how can we make more paper?” We found a book about recycling and learned that old paper scraps can be turned into new paper. The Green Roomers were excited to make new paper for the Blue Room and got to work…