Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Old Blue Prints

My husband works for a modular building company. They draft and print many copies of blue prints for their projects.  I was talking to Jeff one day about needing a large coloring surface for our boys and he came up with this brilliant idea.
The back side of the blue prints!
They go through tons of them at work.  Since his coworkers have found out why he takes them home he gets rolls of them left in his office with notes that say, "for the kids".
They work best in a stack of at least 5 or so to make it thick enough.  Otherwise they are so thin they would pick up on texture of what they are sitting on (which could be a fun project in and of itself) . Every child that has sat down in front of this blank canvas has loved it.  Their eyes sparkle.  No limits because it's free to me, so go to town, start a new sheet.  Who cares?  It's also nice because they can really get in large stokes.  We have also done body traces because they can almost completely fit on them lying down.
I often use this activity for a great distraction for the younger children while I am working on school projects with Lachlan.  They are so happy to freely play with the crayons that they don't mind my attention being on school time.  
The last and best part is that these blueprints get one more use out of them before they get recycled.  Which is just an awesome lesson on the 3 Rs-reduce, reuse, recycle. 
So, if you happen to know someone who has access to blueprints, ask them to bring some home!

2 comments:

  1. Brings back good memories from when I was younger. My dad brought them home all the time too.

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    1. So I am not the first one to think of this? :) Darn it. I am so glad it brings back happy memories I hope it will for my boys too. And you turned in to such a great artist. Maybe this will help bring out the artist side of them too.

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