DIY Repurposed Christmas Garland

This project is a teaching lesson for all of us.

In case you don't already know, I am a part-time preschool teacher in my spare time. I teach Pre-Kindergarten and have been teaching young children for 32 years. 

Every once in a while I find a teaching moment when I least expect it. This time it was during snack time. 

My school provides the children with snack and we often have this applesauce as one of the choices. 

Instead of throwing out the tops every day I suggested to the children that we save them and find a way to reuse them.

We brainstormed ideas about what we thought they could be used for... airplane propellers was the most popular.  

I had the children save the tops in a big jar for a couple of months and before we knew it we filled up the jar twice!

I brought the first batch of tops home and washed them, then laid them out on a paper towel to dry.

When they dried I used a hammer and a small screwdriver to punch a hole in each top... yeah that was a job!

We also saved a few tops from another brand of applesauce and I grabbed all the red ones and drilled a hole in the top. 

Using waxed twine I began stringing the tops. Ten green then one red, ten green then one red....

Before I knew it my garland was about 8 feet long!

I think this silly plastic garland looks amazing! 

It is such an awesome lesson to teach children... what else can you do with things rather than putting it into the trash. 

I have at least this many more tops back at the classroom. 

I'm going to punch more holes in them and have the children give it a try during December when we will use them to decorate our classroom for the holidays. It is a great lesson on recycling as well as fine motor and counting.