"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" Art Projects

With the help of Silvia Guevara, owner of CS3 Consultants in Costa Rica, Abriendo Mentes launched a new art project last month. This past Wednesday was the second installment of this "reduce, reuse, recycle" themed project, created by Silvia and her husband. Abriendo Mentes was fortunate enough to come in contact with Silvia in the first stages of her pilot project.

On Friday November 12th, 50 Abriendo Mentes students and mothers gathered in the Community Center to make plastic bottle mobiles out of used Coke, water and Fanta bottles and waste baskets out of used milk cartons and old magazines. The kids had a blast, the mothers loved having an art project to work on, and we all enjoyed seeing everyone so content.

Heybraham and Jason working on their magazine waste baskets

On Wednesday, November 24th 25 students came together in the new "Kids Club" in Potrero to use more recycled material to make Christmas trees.

There were heaps and piles of old magazines, jars upon jars of white glue (one boy tried eating it, there’s always one) and one piece of cardboard as a base. By ripping the sheets from the magazines and rolling them vertically and then rolling that, you get a colorful spiral. We dipped the spirals in glue and secured them on the cardboard.

We did this over and over again (except each new row had one less spiral than the one below it) until Christmas trees formed.

Mareyling, Dayana and Jennifer getting help from Silvia

Some children painted them green like a real tree, while others dressed theirs all up by gluing on buttons and sparkly and shiny things. And some of the kids trees didn’t exactly look like trees but they had a lot of fun anyway.

After everyone had their trees formed we put string through the top for them to hang it in their houses at home for everyone to see.

Emmanuel, Cesar, Barbabra and Valentina with their finished projects!

The hour was up and the 25 children said goodbye and ran off to show their families leaving behind one huge mess. Glue was on the tables, paper on the glue, paint splattered everywhere except the ceiling and scraps littered the floor. Luckily, there were seven volunteers who worked quickly to cleanup for the adult class.

This week is the last full week before classes end and we have more fun classes and activities in store for the kids. Silvia will be back with us again this Wednesday to make pot holders and baskets out of juice boxes and chip bags.

A hug thank you to Silvia for all of her creativity and wonderful ideas.