Four Crafts that Reuse Bottles

I've been kind of heavy on the soda- I know: bad, Kayla!- and I've gone through five or six plastic bottles in the last three days. Instead of throwing them out, I tried making a few things out of them.  I washed all the bottles, air dried them, and then we crafted.

1. Because we are also learning circles this month, the boys painted using the bottle caps; Either side makes a circle. They did not stay on the task at hand very long, but they loved painting and making a mess with the caps . This was also an excuse to put them in their cute wittle aprons.

2. I plan on making a jar from an old ginger ale bottle, and putting the few little things I bought back from the beach in it. I ran out of time today, but I will update this post with the finished product.  Hopefully, I'll have it finished up by tomorrow evening.  

3. With two bottles, I made reusable cups for the boys. I don't doubt that the sharpie will start to fade, but after one wash it still looks pretty good. To do this, I gave them Sharpie markers and let them go crazy. Meanwhile, on the bottle caps I traced around one of the many reusable straws we have lying around, then I cut the hole out. I used a box cutter; I have awful knife etiquette, but I got the job done. I washed the bottles 15 minutes after they were done coloring them. And viola! They've made their own cups! They are not spill proof, but there's a lid.

4. We also made the all-too-common sensory discovery bottle for Noelle. Instead of completely washing off the label, I colored a checkered black and red design over it.  Then the boys filled it with rice, feathers, pom poms, buttons, and cut up hair ties. The point is to find stuff in the rice, but we got a little carried away.  I sealed the top on with regular glue (I need a glue gun) and let it dry. Ours is not the most visually appealing, but Noelle seems to enjoy it, with supervision, of course. 

These ideas were all pretty easy and not over-the-top.  We do all our crafts at one time, and we only spent an hour of the day playing around with the bottles.  What does everyone else do with their spare bottles?