Materials:

• Something to contain your garden such as an old plastic container (tupperware, recycled food containers) or spare terra cotta pot
• Any random craft materials including (but not limited to):
  • Recycled yogurt container or tissue box
  • Marbles, beads, plastic jewels
  • Popsicle sticks
  • Feathers
  • Markers
  • Scraps of cardboard or fabric
  • Pipe Cleaners
  • Tacky Glue 
  • Scissors
  • Outdoor materials:
  • Soil or Dirt
  • Small Sticks, Leaves 
  • Small stones
  • Moss, Flower petals
• Your imagination!

Directions: 

These directions are just suggestions, feel free to make it however you like!

• Use your plastic container as your base and fill it with some dirt or soil as your base.
• Create a house for your fairy using a recycled yogurt container. Cut out a little rectangle as the door.  You could also build a small house out of popsicle sticks or glue popsicle sticks to a tissue box.
• Decorate your house with gems, buttons, and markers
• You can then add a walkway with marbles or stones.  Use the popsicle sticks for a fence instead.
• Make a welcome sign out of cardboard, attach it to a small stick, and set it in your dirt.
• Create the garden portion using moss or leaves as your greenery and petals for flowers.
• Of course you could also build a tiny table and chairs or stick feathers into the dirt for some texture and color.
• The options are endless, use your own creativity!

Supplies:

• Paper towel tubes
• Cardstock/paper
• Scissors
• Tape (we recommend painter’s tape to keep painted walls intact!)
• Pom-poms

Instructions:

1. Start by taking some of your paper/cardstock and cut in half to make smaller sections. Gather your paper towel tubes as well.
2. Tape the pieces of paper onto the wall in the shape of a tunnel. It is now also the time to incorporate the paper towel tubes on the wall as well!  Make sure you are spreading them out and creating a course that pom-poms can follow!
3. Once all of your pieces of paper and tubes are taped on the wall in a course design, time to test it out! Take some pom-poms and start at the top. Have some fun!

Need inspiration?

• Have you ever seen George Rhoads’ audiokinetic ball machine sculptures at Logan Airport or the Museum of Science in Boston? Here’s a video of a similar Rube Goldberg-type ball machine at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
• You can also think about the cool marble run creations you’ve made in the past!

Tips: 

• Have bouncy balls or ping pong balls? Test those out instead of pom-poms!
• You can always un-tape the course and create a new design!

Activity by Kelly Moy, Schofield Site
Photo Credit & Inspiration: www.toddlerapproved.com

Materials:

• Cardboard frisbees (see how to make them below!)
• Sticks (these will be placed in the ground to mark the hole)
• Cones/something to mark off the tee box (the starting point)
• Small pieces of paper, you will write numbers 1-3 on them.

Making your Cardboard Frisbee:

1. 2. 3. 4.

How to Play:

1. In your backyard, take your small sticks and place them in a parent or guardian approved spot. Mark them with a ‘1’, ‘2’, or ‘3’.
2. The ‘1’ should be closer to the tee box, but not to close. The ‘3’ should be the farthest away. The ‘2’ should be in the middle.
3. Move back to the tee box where you will take your frisbees from earlier and toss them towards the first hole marker. 
4. If you hit the stick marking the first hole, you just got a hole in 1, congrats!
5. If you miss, go to where your frisbee landed and try again. Keep going until you hit the stick marking hole 1. Record your score.
6. Go back to the tee box and go for hole 2 and then hole 3.
7. You may need to use the smaller cardboard frisbee for shorter shots or larger for longer ones. You will figure that out as your play.
8. Move the tee box and the holes around to keep the fun going!

Activity by Stephen Pfaff, Floating Teacher

Supplies required:

• A plastic bottle
• Scissors
• An old sock that you don’t mind cutting
• Duct tape and/or a rubber band
• Dish soap
• Water
• A low bowl for your bubble liquid
• Food coloring (optional)

Instructions:

1. Ask an adult for help cutting off the bottom of your plastic bottle.
2. Take an old sock (you may need to cut it a little bit to fit it over your bottle) and put it over the cut bottom of your bottle.
3. Duct tape the sock to your bottle. This needs to be secure! You might even want to ‘double-up’ and add a rubber band too.
4. Make your bubble juice by putting some dish soap in a bowl and adding just a little bit of water – you want it more soap-y than water-y.
5.  Dip the sock attached to your bottle into the bubble juice.
6. Blow out of the bottle using the mouthpiece (don’t suck in, or the bubbles will go in your mouth!) and watch your bubble snake grow
7. Want to make your snake colorful? Ask an adult to put a few drops of food coloring on your sock!

Activity by Rachel Jong, Hardy Site

Here are ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of the onions Tiana is growing in her backyard!

Materials:

• Vegetable and fruit scraps
• Water
• Small cups/dishes
• Pots/planters
• Soil

Instructions:

Potatoes

Celery, lettuce, cabbage, and green onions

Onions

Tomatoes

Peppers

Supplies: 

• Any recycled items you want to use… here’s an example of one possibility:
  • a small cereal box body, plastic bottles for the legs, plastic tops from for the feet, plastic lids for eyes, strips of styrofoam for the arms, a bamboo skewer flagpole, soda bottle caps for details on top of head and ears, a large round spice container lid for the hat, blue painter’s tape for flag and body details
• Permanent Marker(s)
• Glue (if using a hot glue gun please ask for adult assistance!)
• Painter’s or Masking Tape

Directions 

• Open boxes carefully at the side seam and reconstruct inside out, closing the box at seam with glue or tape.
• Add details to the box with blue tape and then add features with a black permanent marker. Make sure you fix all parts with glue, and use masking or painter’s tape where you want to.

Enjoy  this opportunity to create your own unique robots! 

Have other art supplies around the house? You can add feathers, beads, and more to your recycled robot too!

Activity by Neddra English, Hardy Site
Photo Credit & Inspiration: www.creativejewishmom.com

Our plan is to watch and learn as the caterpillars turn into butterflies. I will keep you updated! We have activities along the way from caterpillar to butterfly!

Today we are starting with caterpillars, of course!

• Not all caterpillars look the same- I found an interesting video of the Lappet Moth caterpillar. When I watched the video, it looks like the caterpillar has a happy face! What does it look like to you?!

• You can make your own caterpillar! There are a few ideas linked below! You can use art supplies, natural materials, or loose parts around the house. Maybe water bottle caps make up the segments of the body? Maybe pipe cleaners or Q tips can be the antenna? Or you can simply draw a caterpillar- think about what markings you want it to have? Some ideas are stripes, alternating colors, dots, or rainbow!
• Caterpillars are very interesting to watch! Check out this video of the Jewel Caterpillar in Ecuador. How does it move? Fast? Slow? Can you move like a caterpillar? What do you notice about it’s head?
• Maybe you can even find a caterpillar in your yard! Go on a caterpillar hunt and send us a picture if you find one!

Ideas

• Yarn wrapped popsicle sticks… https://kidsactivitiesblog.com/80999/craft-stick-caterpillars/
• Egg crate caterpillars… https://www.raegunramblings.com/easy-egg-crate-caterpillar-craft/

Materials:

• A plastic water bottle.
• big wood bead with a hole in the middle
• String or yarn
• Knife (to be use by an adult)
• Washi tape/markers/stickers

Instructions:

1. Pick a bottle, such as the one that has a wide bottom and a narrow opening.
2. Keep the narrow opening closed with a lid and cut the bottom to create a wide opening.
3. Tie one end of the yarn to the wood bead and the other end to the bottle. You can take the cap off the bottle, put the yarn in, and put the lid back to tie the yarn to the bottle.
4. Now you can decorate the bottle with washi tape/markers/stickers
5. Your cup-and-ball toy is ready to play!

Activity by Rose Mattozo, Sprague Site Coordinator

Photo Credit: www.shutterstock.com
Background Information about Game: www.pbs.org 

Materials:

• Toilet paper and paper towel rolls
• Scissors
• Glue
• Masking/duct/electrical tape
• A piece of cardboard (for the base)
• Markers
• Marbles or pom poms

Steps:

1. Decorate toilet paper rolls if desired!
2. Tape them together to make tunnels.
   • Cut the bottoms out of some of them to make slides.
   • Cut some in half lengthwise.
3. Glue or tape some of the slides to the base by cutting a fringe at the bottom of some of the tubes and securing them to the large piece of cardboard
4. Use marbles (or even pom poms) to test out your marble run and make adjustments as needed!

Activity by Stephanie Zafferano, Fiske Site
Photo Credit: www.powerfulmothering.com

Supplies:

• Craft/popsicle sticks or knife
• Toilet paper rolls
• Twine or string
• Scissors
• Peanut butter, Sun butter or Soy butter
• Bird seed or bird-friendly alternatives (below are some ideas)
  • Rolled or quick oats
  • Unsalted and raw, crushed peanuts, pecans, or walnuts
  • Both dry and wet food for cats and dogs is thought to be a healthy food source for birds

Activity:

1. Using a utensil or popsicle stick, cover the outside of the toilet paper roll with peanut butter, sun butter or soy butter.
2. Roll the butter covered toilet paper roll in the bird seed or one of the alternatives until covered.
3. Thread a piece of twine through the toilet paper roll and knot.
4. Hang where birds can enjoy.