We love doing outdoor activities and do our best to preserve
Mother Nature as we come in contact with it.
I wouldn’t exactly call us a green family but we try. Go ahead I just dare you to litter in front
of my 5 year old….the lecture on personal responsibility and facts about our
Planet that follow will be at least 20 minutes long. We don’t litter in this family…..it ranks
right up there with bullying. Do we
recycle no? No not as a habit…we will if
we are out and it’s convenient but at home it confuses me. That’s not an excuse but I just haven’t set
aside the time to set up a system that works for our house yet without causing
a big headache. It’s on our list of
future projects.
We did several neat projects on Earth Day even the little ones
joined in. First we made watercolor
Earths…not the original idea called for coffee filters but we didn’t have
any. If you are like us and live in the
land of the Keurig then you probably don’t either ;-) I improvised with art paper…it’s thicker than
regular copy paper. We colored our Earth
with magic markers and then spritzed with water to allow the colors to blend
together. I placed them outside so they
would dry quicker. I won’t lie the
coffee filters would of probably worked better but the effect was still pretty
neat and we had a blast (yes I made Earth also…I love new art techniques).
After that we had some fun with our dot stampers and some neat
printouts. The older kiddos did a few
more complicated color by number worksheets.
Our final activity for the day was a dirt cake. This is one of my favorite memories from
childhood. I remember spending the night
with my aunt and thinking she was crazy to make a big mess in a flower pot and
then call it cake. BUT I remember it
being delicious!! I thought this would
be a great Earth Day snack. My kids
thought I was losing it…they had never
heard of it and when I ask my Husband to grab fake gummy worms, a flower pot
and fake flowers on the way home he just gave me a blank look. Our 5 year old was so concerned that he woke
up on Earth Day saying “this is the day we have to eat dirt cake, with worms in
it…are you sure about this Mom?” But
they should have had more faith in me because everyone had a blast and it is
YUMMY!!!
Dirt Cake Recipe
3 ½ cups of milk
2 ½ packs of Oreos (crushed to dirt texture)
1 cup powdered sugar
2 small packages of instant vanilla pudding
½ stick softened butter
8 oz. cream cheese
12 oz. cool whip
8 inch flower pot, fake flowers and gummy worms are
optional. You can also make it summer
themed by putting it in a sand pail.
Mix together the butter and cream cheese until creamy then add
your powdered sugar. Add your milk to
your pudding in a separate container (whisking) then let it sit for about 10
minutes. Whisk the cool whip into your
pudding and then combine it with your cream cheese mixture. Place a layer of foil in the bottom of your
flower pot and then add a layer of crushed Oreos. Alternate all the way to the top between the
Oreos and pudding mixture. Cover the top
with remaining crushed Oreos and add your fake flowers and some strategically
placed worms ;-) Enjoy!!!
My hubby spent the day playing in the dirt and making the earth more beautiful... But he does that everyday. Then we watched a baseball game and enjoyed the nice weather (Little B said it was a "lovely" day!), and listened to our 2-year-old tell us about Earth Day and the fun projects he did to celebrate! ;-)
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