Not a Toilet Paper Tube

On Monday we had our daytime meeting for the Holistic Moms Network, and the theme was REUSE, in honor of Earth Day. The idea was to just take stuff from around the house and see what we could make with it. The kids made all kinds of things - pretty boxes for their treasures, bracelets from cardboard, and, of course, monoculars from toilet paper tubes.

The inspiration for this activity was Antoinette Portis' books Not a Box and Not a Stick, which are our favorites around here. Bess especially likes them because the simple, repetitive text and minimalist drawings make it easy for her to "read" the book herself. I like how the cover of Not a Box is made of brown cardboard - like a box. Very clever! I've often thought that a really fun spin off of these books for older kids would be to just pick something, anything from around the house and make up your own book by thinking of as many uses for it as you can. You know, like Not a String, Not a Cup, Not a Chair, whatever. If you try it, let me know how it goes.