Hellobee

Last week was the Week of the Young Child and the kids’ daycare had a lot of fun activities planned for the week, ranging from cooking activities to “camping.” Friday was “recycled costume day” where the kids were supposed to bring costumes made out of recycled materials to school and, in lieu of show-and-tell Friday, got to talk about what materials they used for their costumes.

Being a bit type A, I started stressing out about this and was wondering what kind of costume: 1) I could put together in a relatively short amount of time; 2) one that Lion could help create; and 3) one that I could actually pull off since I’m not one of those moms that makes Pinterest-worthy crafts. As always, I turned to trusty Google to generate some ideas (some of my favorites below), before settling on a recycled water bottle rocket booster (inspiration here). I liked that it wasn’t a full costume, we had almost all the materials already and seemed relatively easy.

Checking out his flames.

For this project, I used two 1 liter water bottles (many that I saw online used 2 liter soda bottles, but we didn’t have any of those and I figured that since this was for a 2-year-old, Lion could do with smaller bottles), chalk paint, hot glue, felt, a cardboard box and an old t-shirt. The only item purchased was the red felt, which I used to make the flames. It was super simple and took less than twenty minutes to do if you don’t count the time it took for the chalk paint to dry.

Typical two-year-old distractions upon approaching daycare.

I just painted each water bottle with chalk paint then, after letting it dry, gave it a quick spray with polyurethane. I cut out the flames from the red felt then glued the flame to the inside of the mouth of each water bottle. I used a t-shirt to figure out how wide to cut a piece of cardboard for the back, then cut four holes into the cardboard, two on each side, to thread the straps through. I cut two straps out of an old t-shirt that we were planning to give away and threaded one through each side of the cardboard. Next, I glued the water bottles to each other, then to the back of the cardboard. When the hot glue was dry, I let Lion try it on and tied each strap around his arm so it looked like a backpack. Presto! Recycled water bottle rocket booster!

Supplies!

Funny story: Lion didn’t want to wear his rocket booster at first and I couldn’t figure out why. Finally, he told me, “Rocket boosters make you fly and if I fly with it, then I will be scared.” Mr. Dolphin said he could use the rocket booster just to make him run really fast and then Lion was all about it. As he raced into the door of his daycare, he turned back to me and asked, “Mama, when Panda grows bigger, can you make a rocket booster for him, too?”

Anyway, here were some of my other top contenders for recycled costume day. I love some of them so much, that I might actually attempt one for Halloween!

Cardboard box lego block – super cute and easy. I’ve seen lots of tutorials that use paper bowls for the lego pegs.

Brown paper bag lion, owl, fox or monkey (with downloadable templates!) – love that these had templates and paper bags are easy to cut!

Cardboard box train – not sure about my box cutting abilities, but it seems doable.

Cardboard box tractor – my favorite and one that I seriously thought about attempting.

Box and duct tape bird – probably not within my realm of creativity, but I thought it was beautiful!

Cereal box jet pack – another jet pack option.