I'm not about to do the math, but after glancing over my stats from the last couple of days I think it's safe to say that at least 85% of you Googled "n4k3d." Roffles!
Brad is quite the up and comer at work. Sure, they shaved about 25% off his paycheck, which was quite the belly punch, but they issued him a crackberry! Like, OMG! Keep your useless greenbacks and give us a crackberry! We'll eat THAT for dinner!
Nice to see Marie Jr. over there ----> has fattened up a bit. Much better.
Help me out here. The kids made these in Children's Church this week. But what the Sweet Fancy Moses are they supposed to be?
Let's consider some data. According to census information, there are about 74 million children in the United States, and 28.8% of Americans go to church regularly. So that makes about 22 million children in church every Sunday. To be conservative, let's say half of them bring home a similar craft each week. That means 11 million paper plates and 55 million cotton balls gone to complete and utter waste in one Swell Foop.
Imagine what you could do with 11 million paper plates and 55 million cotton balls. Besides this, smartypants.
And that's only one Sunday School project!
When I was a kid, doing crafts meant being issued a pile of things that might have gone into the trash and turning them into something clever. Toilet paper tubes, paper bags from the grocery store, cereal boxes, holey socks, old comics from the Sunday paper, feathers we'd find out in the desert, old Christmas cards, gum wrappers, popsicle sticks, soup cans. As long as it was clean it was fair game. Is it just because we were poor?
Because now craft stores are as big as Walmart, and you actually buy packages of popsicle sticks. I dunno about you, but if I had to make a popsicle-stick replica of the Alamo for class, it wouldn't take too long to deliberate between a jumbo pack of actual popsicles and a package of sticks. The point isn't the Alamo, it's eating 900 popsicles! I haven't seen any packages of toilet paper tubes yet, but I bet they're out there.
Crafts are also a lot more organized these days. You can't just sit your kid down with a box of sugar cubes and a bottle of glue, you have to show them the blueprints, don hardhats and monitor every aspect of the operation. "Are you sure you want to put that cube there, Johnny? I thought we were going to save some for the flying buttresses and crenelated towers."
Where's the fun in that? Where's the creativity?
Admittedly, I don't do crafts with my kids. I tried it a couple times, and it just didn't work, probably because I was trying to get a three year old to assemble a recognizable cricket from assorted pom-poms and pipe cleaners. But I'm going to start saving my egg cartons and toilet paper tubes, and one of these days I'm going to sit them down with a heap of the stuff, some glue, crayons and paint, lay down some tarps, and just let them go to town while I chill out on the couch with a trashy novel. And then they'll know what crafts are really all about.
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OMG! Remember when you actually had to EAT all the popsicles!? hahahahaha!
The long, cold winter we spent in Rhode Island would have been unbearable without twine, boxes of craft sticks, and duct tape. Those kids built sailing ships, Navy cruisers,and submarines all winter long. While I sat there trying to stay sane (I didn't know about blogging then, more's the pity).
Aluminum foil is great, too - they made themselves suits of armor out of it.
With no help from me, whatsoever, I might add. Because I don't have that sort of creativity in me.
We have a huge trashcan right outside the church entrance. Guess what goes in it every Sunday afternoon?
We don't do a whole lot of crafts, but I do like to make necklaces with my daughter. It's a great way to teach patterns.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how my church is so very far from green. In my mind, the two subjects kind of go hand in hand. Am I missing something? Seems like the attitude is, "we don't need to worry about the earth, Jesus will come down and save us before anything bad happens."
i love this post.
i think those crafts look like mother's day turkeys.
"I haven't seen any packages of toilet paper tubes yet, but I bet they're out there.".. too funny. scary but funny.
how bout those leftover scraps of wood from "bobs house" up the street? heck i bet anyone of us three could see the hundreds of uses for a pile of rocks.
Ooh, ooh, I built suspension bridges and atoms with gumdrops and/or marshmallows and toothpicks when I was a kid.
I was going to say a turkey and a chick.
My mom is the craft person with the kids, I have no patience for such things. My mil gardens with them, another thing I have no patience for. I feed, keep them clean, make sure they do their homework, and take them fun places.
And you are right, it does seem very wasteful.
My kids have all gone to a small, non-profit, cooperative preschool that doesn't have a lot of money to buy supplies. So the families pitch in by sending toilet paper and paper towel tubes and egg cartons and the like. I never thought much of it until now. We've been environmentally friendly without realizing it!
My oldest girl saves every piece of trash she can get her hands on because she "can make something with it!" Unfortunately, the stuff usually just filters to the bottom of the pile on her desk and I eventually throw it out.
Kenna- exactly! My church has a little cafe, with really good food, but they use styrofoam plates. Which should pretty much be illegal by now. Thought we were supposed to be good stewards and all that?
Oh I hated when Peter had a crackberry at his former job. His boss would literally email him at 11-midnight all the time and expect a reply back right then and if Peter didn't respond he would get chewed out at the office the next morning. I wanted to throw that thing away so many times.
Don't get me started on the whateverberry! If he had to choose between me or that danged thing, I might start to get a little nervous... I stole it from him one night when we went out to dinner (for our anniversary, mind you!) and he was a nervous wreck until I gave it back to him. Agh! Crafting ~ I'm a crafty mom, but hate the mess, so only allow it every second Tuesday in months that have Rs in them.
The crafts drive me nuts! My kid actually comes home each week with her "cutting work"--an envelope full of scraps of paper she has cut off something else. And don't get me started on what happened when the kids saw their precious "projects" in the recycle bin! Really, we're supposed to save every last drop??
Don't forget the "fishing hole" we dug in the empty field between Bob's house and ours, and the town we built in the back yard with the scraps from the fence Dad built.
LOL remember the rubber band guitars?
BTW, what the hell is a crackberry? Sounds like something that forms on the noggin when someone gets cracked over the head with a plank, or perhaps a crackhead dessert?
I give the kids a box, a couple pieces of string, two paper cups glued together. They connect the string to the box and to the cups. Then they decorate the cups and lastly I have them write Wii on the box because that is the closest they'll get to having a Wii at the house...
I am still laughing at an Alamo made out of popsicle sticks!
I teach Texas History and this just got me giggling.
And sugar cube art? The UNBELIEVABLY HUGE Texas tree roaches would be in heaven....so, no Alamo out of sugar cubes.
Anyway (and seriously) I agree that we need to use old fashioned, "gettin ready to be thrown away" craft supplies.
I think your cotton balls on the paper plates are clouds. That's my vote.
I'm with ve -- we are happily wii-less also!
55 million cotton balls - ACK! For sure! All so well said - I totally agree - when I was a kid we used trash to make crafty things - there was no Michaels or Hobby Lobby!
Thanks for stopping by Maria - nice to see you. Take care and see you soon - Kellan
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