Our little guy is currently addicted to two foods - sliced deli turkey and Happy Baby Green Puffs. He goes through several canisters of the latter a week! The bottles the puffs come in have such a cool shape, I've decided to give myself the challenge of reinventing them. Especially given that Earth Day is in a few days, I figured this would be the perfect post! Perhaps you also have some puff containers (or other bottles) that could be used to create a super fun car city. :)
Just to illustrate - this is the stash of bottles after just two weeks. Yikes. Do you think they have a twelve step program for babies? ;)
First we stripped the plastic off the outside. It came off very easily with scissors. Then we used some of S's copious foam sticker stash to decorate. We have a whole set of mixed color geometric shapes, so those that weren't already squares or rectangles were easily cut into those shapes. If you'd like your city to be monochromatic, Michaels and other craft stores sell large sheets of adhesive foam for less than a dollar!
S helped me decorate the buildings. We decided to do a set of three rows of windows two wide on each side to make the bottles look like skyscrapers.
X inspected our work. While he loved the city buildings and was actually quite gentle with them, we found that he liked to eat the roads, so he sat in his highchair and snacked (on more puffs, hahaha) while S set up her city.
I made several strips of varying length roads by cutting up some large black foam sheets I bought at Michaels for around 60 cents each. Using a glue gun, I glued on little yellow stripes to divide the road into two lanes.
We absolutely loved how this project turned out. S has already made several different configurations of cities, and there's always room to expand because it's super easy to make more roads!
She set up this city to have a square in the middle and told me that's where the city's park and playground were. :)
We have these cute little wooden cars from a set she got for her first birthday, but you could absolutely use Hot Wheels cars as well. The scale is just perfect for them, I think.
S had fun narrating the story of the various cars. Here red car had to travel the whole length of the city to get to his friend's house.
Here he's knocking on the door to see if his friend is home.
And after a fun day of driving around, he parked in his garage. Hahaha.
All in all this whole project cost less than $3! We have been having so much fun with our recycled car city - we highly recommend it!
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All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children. As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family. I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision. Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies). Observe caution and safety at all times. The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.
I love this idea! Thanks so much for sharing it with us. I'm off to pin it now, as I know my son would have fun making his own recyclable city for his cars and trucks. :)
ReplyDeleteMary Catherine of Fun-A-Day
Thank you, Mary Catherine for pinning it and for the sweet comment! I hope you guys enjoy your city as much as we do! :)
DeleteWhat a great way to recycle. My kiddos went thru tons of those puff containers and I always felt guilty tossing them! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Scribble Doodle and Draw! Hahaha - kids just love those puffs!
DeleteReally love this! It looks like so much fun!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ann! It's so awesome! S is playing with it as I type this. :)
DeleteI'm the Editorial Assistant for Fun Family Crafts and I wanted to let you know that we have featured your city! You can see it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://funfamilycrafts.com/recycled-car-city/
If you have other kid-friendly crafts, we'd love it if you would submit them. If you would like to display a featured button on your site, you can grab one from the right side bar of your post above. Thanks for a wonderful project idea!
Thank you, Cindy! What a lovely feature! :)
DeleteHi Asia! I'd like to feature this project in an article for MomIQ. I'd use one photo, and link back to you. Please let me know at palak.makeithandmade(at)gmail(dot)com if that's not ok. :)
ReplyDeleteLove the buildings! My toddler and I made roads last week by studying pictures of roads and the roads in our neighborhood and making some "noticings". The stripes and lines are a little crazy, but they're all yellow and white and he painted them himself from his own observations!
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet idea, Anna! I love that!!!!
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