Earth Day Shaving Cream Art

A year ago my son Colton decided to use the same technique that we used for creating marbled eggs with shaving cream HERE to create an earth for Earth Day. The art project came out so stunning, and it became very popular after I wrote about it HERE.

When Fox contacted me to film an Earth Day segment on the Mom Squad, I knew exactly what to share.

For more shaving cream art ideas, check these out:

Hearts for Valentine's Day Fall Leaves Easter Eggs Stars for 4th of July
Can you tell my kids are hooked on shaving cream art?  Your kids will be too, trust me.
Click HERE for more Mom Squad segments (and keep scrolling down.) Enjoy!

 For more Earth Day activities, click HERE and then SCROLL DOWN to see all the posts.

Awesome Earth Day Art Project

Since my kids went absolutely crazy over the marbled eggs we made from paint and shaving cream, they wanted to use the same method for Earth Day to create the most awesome earths ever!!!

Is that not the coolest earth you've ever seen?

They were such a hit that six neighborhood kids wanted to join in on the fun and make them, too!  

For all the details on how to do this art project, {Click Here}. The only thing we did different was we used blue and green paint only and we cut circles (instead of ovals) from construction paper. 

 Each creation is unique! I love that part!

This art project is sure to be a hit with your kids!

UPDATE:
This project became so popular that Fox asked me to film a segment about how to make these shaving cream earths.

 
My kids are so hooked on shaving cream art that they have made:

shaving cream hearts for Valentine's Day


shaving cream earths for Easter

shaving cream stars for the Fourth of July

shaving cream leaves for fall

Enjoy!

 For more Earth Day activities, click HERE and then SCROLL DOWN to see all the posts.

Want to see a castle made entirely from recycled materials?

As I was teaching my kids about Earth Day and discussing how you can reuse things to make new creations, I remembered learning about Solomon's Castle. It is located in South Florida, not too far from where I live. I'd seen a short episode about it on television a few months ago so I looked on-line to see if I could find it. Lucky me, I found it on You-Tube! It is produced by a local television program called Curious Kids, and the children visit Mr. Solomon to learn more about turning trash into treasure. He even made a castle from trash! Take a look!

 

For more Earth Day activities, click HERE and then SCROLL DOWN to see all the posts.

Earth Day Activities for Kids

Here are my family's favorite activities to celebrate Earth Day:

• Watch the movie Wall-E which is about a garbage collecting robot that has been left behind to clean up an abandoned, polluted earth.

• Watch the movie The Lorax, which is made from a treasured Dr. Seuss classic. It teaches young children about the importance of caring for our Earth and not polluting. I love the vibrant colors and images in this movie which makes it one of my favorites to watch with my family for Earth Day.

• Read the book The Wump World by Bill Peet. It is a pro-environment book that is entertaining and captures the child's complete attention. I personally like all of the strong vocabulary words that are used, which can lead to many impromptu vocab. lessons.  The Wump World was a required read aloud when I taught third grade in a public school.

• Read the book Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel, which is a super cute book with colorful illustrations. Michael Recycle tells the adventures of a young superhero whose power allows him to teach people about recycling. My kids really like this book. In fact, they liked it so much that we've read other books in this series, too.

• Recite the scripture- "People are the caretakers of the earth." Genesis 1:28

• Play "Litterbug Wars." This is fun! Have your children crumble up used sheets of paper. We usually look through our office trash can for these. Then divide a large room into halves with a line of masking tape on the floor. I move our family room furniture to the side to create more space. Give Team A and Team B the same number of pieces of crumbled paper. Ten is a good number for a team of two people. Add more paper for larger teams. Have Mom and Dad get involved, too. Tell the teams when to begin. Each team throws the paper off of their side onto the opposing side as fast as they can. Stop the clock in 1-2 minutes. The team with the cleanest side (least number of paper) wins!

• Take a walk around your neighborhood picking up trash.
  

• Teach your child the three R's- Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle. {Click Here} to see a short video of a castle is made entirely from recycled products. This is a fantastic way to teach children how to reuse things to create new things.

• Watch this really cool way a man makes a castle from recycled materials.

• Have fun with free printables and books from education.com, such as these:

• Make Dirt Cake. {Click Here} to learn how.

• Make a "Save the Earth" art project. I love this one! Give your child a sheet of white construction paper. Wet a coffee filter and lay it on the paper. Paint the filter with water colors. The colors will bleed and go through the filter onto the paper. After painting, gently lift off the filter. The paper should now resemble the earth with white gaps for the clouds in the atmosphere as it is seen from space. This is so cool! When the paper is dry, cut out the circle and glue it to a sheet of black construction paper. Have your child use white chalk to make stars or use star stickers on the black paper. Now you can take the dry coffee filter and fold it in half with a pipe cleaner or clothespin to make an Earth Day Butterfly.
• 
• You can also make an earth from shaving cream and paint! {Click Here} for more details. This project is completely AWESOME!

Enjoy!

Dirt Cake

My kids LOVE this simple dessert because it tastes yummy, is FUN to make, and my four boys and dirt just seem to go together. We make this dessert for Halloween, when we are learning about plants or insects, to celebrate spring, and sometimes for no special reason, just because we are craving it.

Dirt Cake

1 pkg. Oreo cookies
1-8 oz. cream cheese (softened)
1 c. powdered sugar
3 1/2 c. milk
2 sm. French vanilla or chocolate instant pudding boxes
1 small container Cool Whip

Mix the cream cheese and powdered sugar together. In a separate bowl, blend pudding together with the milk. Add the Cool Whip to the pudding mixture then blend in the cream cheese mixture.

Crumble the Oreos in a blender. Add half of Oreos into mixture or use to create layers with the pudding. Sprinkle the other half of Oreos on the top. Refrigerate until ready to eat.

Watch my kids demonstrate how to make Dirt Cake on FOX's Mom Squad.

And the fun doesn't stop after you make this classic dessert!  There are so many different things you can do with it before you eat it. 

You can line the inside of a clay flower pot with foil or use a plastic flower pot.. Alternate cookie crumbs and filling and sprinkle the remainder of the cookie crumbs on top. Top with Gummy Worms and plastic flowers. This is perfect for springtime parties and when your kids are learning about plants in school.

You can also make individual dirt cupcakes like this one.

Put the dirt cake in a baking dish and fill it up with gummy worms and other gummy insects when your kids are learning about insects or during Halloween time for a gross dessert.

For a spooktacular treat, use Ghosts Mashmallow Peeps and Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. Stick toothpicks in the bottoms of the ghosts and place around your dirt dessert, along with the cookies. This will create ghosts in a graveyard- how fun!

Source

You can use candy corn pumpkins and create a pumpkin patch for fall.

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You can make Summer Sand and an Easter Dessert by substituting the chocolate pudding with vanilla pudding and the chocolate Oreos for the golden Oreos.

Add some Bunny Marshmallow Peeps and jelly beans to create an Easter dessert. Stick toothpicks in the bottoms of the bunnies and place around your dirt dessert, along with the jelly beans. So cute!

Layer it in a bucket and use a pail to serve it. This is a big hit at pool parties or beach-themed parties. (My kids also like to make Summer Sand with our favorite banana pudding recipe.)

UPDATE:

My sister made this adorable Olaf cake using the summer sand concept.  Some tips she had was to add blue food coloring to make the pudding look like an ocean and to divide up the cookie and pudding part. Totally cute!

Enjoy making these desserts with your kids!