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DIY great gifts made from old socks

DIY great gifts made from old socks

by Beth Gineris beth gineris
Go Green | Recycling

parenting with mindfulness combines modeling values and fun
Every holiday is an opportunity to promote consumerism or GO GREEN. Here is an easy, fun way to promote creativity, time spent together, and model the value of reusing materials in a loving and useful way. Set aside about an hour wth your child to be creative.

1. Get you child's old socks. Choose the ones that have meaning so that you can both create a memory connection and encourage creativity.

2. Gather stuffing material (which can be other old socks or cotton or material from a craft store), felt, fun print and plain cloth material, pipe cleaners (for feet, arms etc), glue, and scissors. You will also need a needle and thread.

3. Choose what you want to design, an animal, piece of fruit, or plant. You can look online for ideas and images.

Once you have all your needed material and an idea of what you want to create, your first step is to stuff the sock to the desired fullness. Sew this together at the base. With glue add, ears, eyes, nose, hair, arms, legs, or other identifying aspects with the felt, material, and the pipe-cleaners. You can use the print in the material as a guide or create your own patterns.

Let dry.

Voila! You have a super lovable gift for any holiday that re-uses material which would otherwise be thrown away. This models renewable resources, and reuse, as part of gift giving, and increases your child's creativity development. If you do this with baby and toddler socks it has an extra positive effect of reminiscence for grandparents, aunts, and nannies.

Have fun with it and watch how your child begins to apply this concept to other creative activites as well as other reusable materials.

Going green can be so much fun!

Resources : Turning NO to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness (Gineris, 2011)



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