This next project was inspired by Earth Day. It was also inspired by our need for place mats on our dining room table! Out in front of our house we have a circle of wildflowers surrounding a large deciduous tree. The girls and I went out and picked flowers, leaves, grasses, as well as a few roses from Grandpa's bountiful back yard, and we set to work pulling the petals off of the flowers for our project. I laid out place mat sized pieces of clear contact paper in front of each kid (sticky side up), and they set about pressing all the organic materials onto the contact paper in their own unique designs. Elliot seemed to prefer to place all of her petals and leaves in one of the four corners of the contact paper, so I helped her spread them out, keeping in mind how these might look on our table. After the contact paper was thoroughly covered, I placed another piece on top of the collage (sticky side down) and pressed the two sheets together. I trimmed around the edges with a pair of fancy scissors, and now we have two new place mats to keep our table clean! As we did this project a couple of weeks ago, the petals have been turning various shades of brown, which has provided us a teaching tool to use with our kids. While we probably won't use them forever, they at least keep something decorative on the table while the flowers we are pressing are ready for use!
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