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These "Reusable Canvas Bags" are another project that we have done in Garden Club before that the kids love! We decide to do these canvas bags as a way to show how we should recycle in our world and that they can use this bag instead of plastic or paper bags. After the kids make their bags, we have them bring the bag when they have their Garden Club meeting to take important things home. We will also have them bring it in the summer to take home veggies from the school garden! We highly encourage them to use the bag at home when going grocery shopping (or any type of shopping)!
For this project's prep, we had to order blank canvas bags on Amazon and collect items for them to paint with. In the past, we have just done vegetable painting on these bags, but this year we did vegetable painting as well as recyclable items and other food painting! The kids loved it! We ordered these canvas bags in bulk a few weeks prior. Here is the link for the bags we ordered:
After we get the bags, we take an 8.5 x 17 sheet of paper and stick it in the bag--this will prevent the bag from sticking together if/when the paint goes through. We also had to think outside of the box on the things we wanted the kids to paint it with. This year, we made a trip to the grocery store and picked up peppers, mushrooms, carrots, celery and lasagna noodles. We also make a trip to The Dollar Tree to pick up fake leaves for the students to do leaf printing if they wanted. We also collected soda bottles for them to use the bottom as a stamp (it kind of looks like a flower). We also had to make sure we had enough paint--we use acrylic paint that we order in the beginning of the school year.
For this meeting, we do it all as one group. We cut up the veggies and prep the other items at the very beginning of the meeting--slicing whole mushrooms in half, slicing peppers, cutting celery into pieces, cutting carrots into pieces and break lasagna noodles in half. You can cut/break these however you want--we cut them in ways that we think would make a cool stamp/print and we broke the noodles in half so it was smaller for the side of the noodle to make a cool design. Be creative, we cut some of the carrots into different designs like hearts and squares so it would make a cool stamp (in the past we have also used potatoes and done the same thing). We had to discuss the best way to do the painting/stamping--not a lot of paint, keep items with the same colors, etc.. We demonstrated/modeled how to paint the fake leaves (on the rough side where you can feel like vein/stem of the leaf) on a scrap piece of paper and then to press it onto their bag and lift up for the print to work.
We set up three different tables in the classroom for the students to paint at. One table had the leaves, one table had all the vegetables, and one table had the soda bottles and lasagna noodles. Students then got a bag, wrote their name on it with Sharpie somewhere on the back (we suggested the top part), and then were able to paint it however they wanted. We also discussed with the kids fun things to do with these items to make a scene or a fun pattern on the bag--in the past the bag has sometimes ended up a brown mess on the bag, but giving them a little direction seems to help!
After students finished their own personal bag, they were able to decorate another canvas bag (if time) for a future Garden Club fundraiser--in the past we have sold the bags for $3 a piece at family events for our club to get money for supplies such as paint and other fun activities such as field trips!
Supplies: canvas bags, sharpies, 8.5 x 17 paper, paint--various colors (we use acryllic), smocks (we have a bunch of old t-shirts for the students who may need them), vegetables (carrots, celery, mushrooms, beans, potatoes, peppers, etc.), lasagna noodles, soda bottles. Anything else that would be fun/different for the kids to paint with!
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