Well, this morning my children and I went to install the tapestry in the library at Horace Mann Elementary in San Jose. It is nice to see it finally in its home! The student collaborative work along with the new recycling books purchased will hopefully inspire more recycling activities in the future at this school. This Target Arts grant was a fun project to conduct. My hands are a bit sore from hole punching water bottle bottoms for stitching, though! All materials are recycled, including the backing nylon netting donated by Walker of San Francisco. All the diatoms were created by the students in the workshops I taught in their classes and at their science fair.
9 Comments
In the last few days I have been stitching the tapestry together. Three fourths of the tapestry are stitched together here. This represents 8 hours of stitching. Each plastic bottle bottom is hole punched several times and tied with fishing line. The produce netting jellyfish and polyps as well as the weavings of starfish will be attached after the diatoms have been attached.
We have completed the first workshops making the diatoms. In the next workshop, students will continue creating these (we need diatoms that are mostly purple, ones that are mostly blue and ones that are mostly green). Students will also begin to create sea creatures for the tapestry out of pipe cleaners, plastic bags and produce netting.
Well, I have almost worked my way through all the bags I currently have. I will be making the last recycle pick up from the school tomorrow after the science fair. Today I cut 43 more water bottles. So that is 588 water bottles and about 6 hours of washing an prepping! The heat is really strong so I want to complete the cutting before the bottles begin to distort and degrade in their bags outside.
I have also begun to link the completed diatoms together. Yesterday was the first workshop with one of the Third grade classes and now we have student samples to show other students in the next workshops.
I have also begun to link the completed diatoms together. Yesterday was the first workshop with one of the Third grade classes and now we have student samples to show other students in the next workshops.
Quite a few more bags were delivered yesterday. I have cut and prepped 77 of these bottles...many more to go. Total so far is 545 bottle bottoms.
As of yesterday I have cut a total of 468 water bottles for this project. It take about an hour to cut and wash and rinse 100 bottles. The children will be creating a dramatic large tapestry. I also saved the colored caps so they will be using those, too.
This past weekend I spent a couple of hours washing and cutting water bottles. I cut 220 bottle bottoms. There are still more bags of bottles in the side yard for me to prepare! The students have done a good job of collecting.
Below: This may not look like a lot, there are 220 water bottle bottoms here in this box. I have another box of a similar amount prepared from previous weeks.
Below: This may not look like a lot, there are 220 water bottle bottoms here in this box. I have another box of a similar amount prepared from previous weeks.
I was out of town last week and when I returned saw that the students collected many bottles!
Below: Today I started to wash and cut off the bottle bottoms for the diatoms. There are 101 bottle bottoms here (stacked in two layers) and I saved the colored bottle caps for the tapestry as well. The remainder of the 101cut up bottles were enough to fill three paper grocery bags and were recycled. It took an hour and a half cut, wash and clean these bottles. I am sure I will get quicker as I work my way through these other bags!
Wow! A lot of recyclables this week!
