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Arts and Crafts in the Garden

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The Usual Mayhem Child Central Station The Usual Mayhem Child Central Station

 I am so excited to be co-hosting  this lovely BLOG HOP with The Usual Mayhem to get me energized and thinking spring! Today is my final post in this linky series all about some of the arts and crafts we have done for out in our garden!

We have a rock garden right off of our front porch. I like to use it as an area to showcase some arts and crafts projects that we have made. Some of the projects are done with the children, and some of them are my own artistic endeavors.

Stepping Stones Tutorial

We make stepping stones every spring. Rather than using a kit- we make ours out of Portland cement and use some plastic fruit tray containers as molds. Many people have described our location based upon our street name and our stepping stones and colorful tire planters in our rock garden.

More Stepping Stones


Our rock garden has evolved over time- but has been a great place to collect all of the treasured rocks the children have found on our journeys.  Initially it was just rocks, but a couple of years ago- we added two rows of painted tires:

Our tire planters before the flowers bloom
Our tire planters with flowers in bloom
You can read about the painting of our tires here.

Another garden craft that we tend to utilize on a yearly basis is our coffee can totem pole.
Over the years- we have adapted our original technique and now have a fairly solid technique in place. You can read about how we put these together in our Spooky Totem Poles post.

We have also made some painted rocks:

and upcycled some plastic lids into art- after we painted them, 
we taped them to a bamboo stick to add to our rock garden:


I made some fun butterflies and flowers out of aluminum cans:



I also cut some laundry detergent bottles into butterfly shapes
 and the children helped to decorate them:

We've been working on some cap murals to add to the fence near our square foot gardens:


We have a lot of plans for outdoor garden art this year! You'll just have to stay tuned to see exactly what we are going to be up to :). 

, 
and now.... It's time to HOP!  A blog hop is a linky that is hosted on various blogs at the same time. If you link up on any one of the blogs- your post will appear in the same list on all of the other blogs who add the blog hop code! All of the following blogs have opted to join in on our fun:

*   The Usual Mayhem   *   Child Central Station   *   Housing a Forest   *   Rainy Day Mum   *   Growing Green Fingered Kids   *   Nature and Play   *   Fantastic Fun and Learning   *   Kitchen Counter Chronicles   *   Teach Preschool   *   The Educators' Spin On It   *   Kindergarten and Preschool for Parents and Teachers   *   The Fairy and the Frog   *   Let The Children Play   *   Little Illuminations   *   Early Play Outdoors   *   52 Days to Explore   *   Music Sparks   *   Milk and Cuddles   *   Teach Beside Me   *   The Pleasantest Thing   *   Making Boys Men   *   I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here   *


You can join us too! Please feel free to link up any posts new or old that relate to planting or gardening with children. The posts may be directly about gardening or involve garden art, crafts, or learning activity. 

 AND... If you'd like, 
you can Grab Our Button 
to Add to the Post too! 

The Usual Mayhem Child Central Station


Have fun hopping and linking up! 
I hope you've enjoyed all of our garden fun!
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Erin D - The Usual Mayhem said…
Eureka! Finally, a use for the beautiful glass stones my sidekick and I couldn't resist at the dollar store but couldn't decide what to do with afterwards! Thanks for sharing.
April 18, 2013 at 8:51 AM
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