“Earth laughs in flowers.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
This week we celebrate Earth Day.
I recently saw this ad from Crayola and it started me thinking about ways we can “go green” and recycle in the art room. In the ad, Crayola is promoting their “go green” initiative, which encourages people to send in their used markers so they can be converted to fuel! Visit their website to learn more.
We also found some great ideas for turning old art supplies into something new! For example, take your old colored pencil pieces and turn them into art. Or create new earth day inspired crayons from your old ones. We even found someone who created coat hooks from paint brushes!
Other ways you can encourage students to “go green” , is by showing them ways to transform into art, ordinary items that normally would have just been tossed in the trash. We love this lion made from scraps of cardboard, and the face made from pieces of drinking straws.
One of the more extreme projects is Tim Dey’s “Ghost of Versailles”, which was made from used packing supplies, bubble wrap, drop cloths, aquarium tubing and soda bottle bottoms.
These and many other projects can be found on our Pinterest site. Visit our “Earth Day…Every Day” board for inspiration, and please don’t hesitate to share your Earth day projects with us so we can add them to our board.
So before you your throw those old newspapers, or used containers away, stop and think, you never know what type of art you could create from it and what good you might do for Mother Earth. After all, as this Native American Proverb states so well: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”.
Since April is Autism Awareness Month, next week we will be wrapping up the month with a look at Art and Autism. We hope you will join us again then!