gardening – Page 2 – KidsChaos.com

Papier-mâché seedling pots from cereal boxes

Chaos writes:

So… what does one do with cereal boxes, if you can’t bear to stick them in the recycling, how about cooking up some cute little Papier–mâché seedling pots.

We ripped the cardboard cereal boxes and rice cake boxes into small pieces, and gave them a good soaking. Then pulped the pieces with water, in the blender (sssh, don’t tell Daddy).

Draining the pulp in a colander, squeezing the excess water. Flour the work surface, and mix, knead in some flour {SECRET INGREDIENT ALERT!}.
And take small quantities, pushing into the silicone muffin cases to mold the little pots. We air-dried the pots over-night, however, for speed, you could pop them into the oven, if you were baking spuds, or home-made pizza anyway!

We DID try to make a batch of these seedling pots in conventional metal cake trays… FAIL!, they set solid, glued in… so yes, silicone rules!

If you’re looking for these silicone muffin cases you can find them here in the US and here in the UK (affiliate links)

Click this image below to watch the youtube video of our Google+ hangout – and watch Maggy from Red Ted Art sharing her shadow puppet theatre and her ‘everlasting’ picture frame, Playful Learners made another gorgeous puppet theatre Aly at Plus 2 Point 4 showed us how to use a box as a weaving loom, and my fave, Me and My Shadow and her vintage style secret book…

To read more on our gardening adventures click here to see where we got our delicious compost for our seedlings.

To see how our garden grows, follow our Gardening With Kids posts here.

and how to make an indoor watering can here!

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it! Ali also writes at aGreenerLifeforus.com.

crafts, education, gardening, gardening with kids, kids

Gardening with kids – watching the seeds grow

Chaos writes:

So, you may have read my previous post about the lovely @soggywelly sending us some random seeds and beans? Well… look how they are shooting up!
my Mother used to make these newspaper planters (and, having shot the video of lovely Maggy Red Ted Art demonstrating how to make them).

Really simple to do with the kids, and to involve them with planting the seeds and beans. We also made some cute little labels – thank you Life at the Zoo for the inspiration!

And along with the toilet roll tubes, these can be popped straight into the earth in the garden – although, it’s so cold here at the moment, I think we’ll keep them on the window sill for a little longer!

We’ve popped these on the sitting room window sill, it’s only little greenhouse, and keep a little plastic milk bottle beside the seeds, with a few holes punched into the lid so that we don’t forget to water them… something 8yo feels proud to ‘be in charge of’ – and excited every day at their growth rate!

To see how our garden grows, follow our Gardening With Kids posts here.

And find out how to use your toilet roll tubes to make bird seed feeders too.

Are you on Google+ Follow me here, and say hello, and I’ll add you back to my circles.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x

crafts, gardening, gardening with kids, key stage 2

Let’s Get Planting

Chaos writes:

It’s that time of year again! March is here at last, the sun is shining, and I cycled to the Post Office to pick up a parcel, which could not be delivered as the sender had not put enough stamps on the envelope! Mustn’t grumble, as it was a parcel from the lovely Sue at @SoggyWelly (a new friend – through the gorgeous Georgie @TheFlowerFarmer, go follow them both!) with some seeds she wouldn’t be using (oh, how I love twitter).

Love how she addressed me on the envelope, ‘Veg Lady’ – that had them giggling at the Post Office!

We’ve got some delicious compost from our compost bin! We wanted to wait three months for the compost to “develop” and we still had our old ‘bee-hive’ bin which had been a birthday pressie from WigglyWigglers SOME time ago (wow, I hear you say, your family really know how to treat you on your special days!). The kids are really excited about getting stuck in! Wellies at the ready….

This new compost bin, and therefore the compost…. though, woah, it’s GOOD!

It’s a *HotBin* and can achieve hot composting between 40-60 °C, which means it’s producing a rich compost faster.

It has a little thermometer on the top, which satisfyingly tells you how HOT your compost is!
As hotter temperatures can be achieved we can recycle more types of household waste including food waste, grass cuttings, shredded paper etc. So great for land-fill-avoidance. And fascinating for the kids too!

The website is brilliant, with informative PDFs and videos. We have had great support from their team, for example they sent us a new filter through the post, and emailed a link to a simple ‘how to’ video…. Fantastic Customer Support!

We’ve got rocket, tomatoes, salad leaves, and more – I’ll be back tomorrow with news on our planting, will let you know how we get on! 🙂

Click here for a delicious recipe with Rocket and click here if you’d like to read our quick and easy Pizza recipe.

To see how our garden grows, follow our Gardening With Kids posts here.