Recycled
Robot !
Kill two birds with one activity! This is a great way to reuse paper grocery bags and encourage your child’s imagination with some fun home made pretend play!
- Gather your materials. You will need a large brown grocery bag, a marker, some paint, a few pipe cleaners, scissors and stickers if you want. I had a stapler in there but only because I made the head hole HUGE and had to make adjustments.
- If like me you have a grocery bag with printing on the outside you will want to turn it inside out. It will make the bag wrinkly but my son didn’t seem to mind one bit.
- Cut out large arm openings, you don’t want holes because the bag will rip, instead you will need large openings from the bottom to the shoulder.
- Cut a large head opening. Here is should be a hole.
- Draw some fun roboty buttons and dials.
I asked my son what he wanted and he said “button” as he pointed at my shirt so that’s what we did. There is no wrong way to do this! - Add fun stuff like stickers, or cut out foam shapes, the sky is the limit. We added small star stickers.
- Start painting!
We used a foam brush because it spreads the paint thin and you will want to have a quick drying robot costume since no child wants to wait to make believe! - Add another color or two!
- Add some pipe cleaners for added flair – I threaded them through and bent all the ends so there were no sharp edges. Let the paint dry.
- Have fun playing robot!
Jennifer says
Stopping by to say hello. I found your website a few weeks ago and have really enjoyed your ideas. You are so creative! You have really inspired me to look around the house for ideas! Thank you so much!
We love your robot and wanted to show you ours….we used a diaper box!!! http://onebuttermilksky.blogspot.com/2008/08/robot.html
Thank you again for your great site and sharing all of your wonderful ideas! I hope it’s okay that I also listed you on our blog.
Jennifer says
When I saw the paper bag I immediately thought of the “paper bag princess” by Robert Munch.
At home we use a larger sized gift bag with the attached rope handles and open up the bottom. The Kids step in and you have an instant dress. I am a nanny of 2 kids and a mother of a now 5 year old. It has been a great hit for all “my” kids; ages 2-5, boy and girls.
We read the the story the paper bag princess of course. But they still ask how come the bag never burned.
Allie says
Paper Bag Princess is easily in my Top 5 favorite books! I love her sass! Good point about the bag never getting burnt, I guess I just assumed she was careful .