Earth Day Nature Craft / Plantable Seed Paper

hi there welcome to this month's edition of nature fast with angel that's me i'm angel ellers and this month's edition is extra special because it is the earth day special we always aim at having an environmental education component to an eco-friendly craft during these programs but this month we wanted to highlight two very special themes that are related to the earth and they are recycling and planting seeds 2021 is the 51st anniversary of earth day so we thought we'd like to highlight a few fun ways that you can get involved today and every day but why is recycling important it wasn't until 1989 that recycling became mandatory in new york city before that people didn't have to separate their plastic glass metal or paper trash from the rest of their household waste everything was shipped to the same place at the landfill even if some of the materials took much longer to break down this meant that even materials that were able to be reused and turned into new things were lost in the heat but with new mandates on recycling our landfills and waste systems can be better managed for efficiency and safety most importantly there's no reason to make new plastic for products if recycled plastic can be transformed into those products for craft number one you will be making plantable paper out of old greenbelt documents that have been shredded and are now being recycled and why is planting wildflowers important besides how beautiful they are well whether planting trees wildflowers or vegetables making sure you help nature by planting what you've taken eaten or used is crucial to our planet's survival the wildflower seeds that you will be using for both of your crafts today are from american meadows northeast pollinator wildflower seed mix we made sure to get a good mix of seeds that are native to this part of the country including perennial lupines indian blanket flower butterfly milkweed and black-eyed susans all of which are particularly attractive to the various vital pollinators that do so much important work in our natural environment pollinators are the animals and insects that quite literally help pollinate our native plants some common pollinators include honeybees hummingbirds beetles butterflies moths flies wasps and even fats planting seeds is not only good for the environment but it's good for you today we're going to be making not just one but two really cool recycled paper crafts the first one is a recycled plantable paper ornament so we're going to use the recycled paper that i told you about we're going to mix it all up put some wildflower seeds in them let it dry and then we're going to be able to plant it in the earth and watch those beautiful flowers grow but first we're going to need to know what materials we'll need so come right down here and we'll start we'll need some cookie cutters or molds whatever you have at home you could even use a muffin tin or something like that but these are great because they're really cute little designs we're going to need a measuring cup to measure the water and the shredded paper that we're using [Music] we'll need some wildflower seeds some seeds are bigger than others we only need about two tablespoons but with this craft it is not an exact science you'll need a blender or some sort of food processor to make the craft a lot easier we'll need a strainer and a mixing bowl you need some sort of towel that you might not mind getting dirty or messy or even getting some food coloring on you need a baking tray or any sort of flat tray some plastic wrap and optionally we will need some food coloring am i forgetting anything oh the paper right i forgot to show you that i had mentioned that we're using old greenbelt documents and i meant that quite literally we kept a whole bunch of old papers from old programs and things that we don't need anymore and we thought that maybe there might need to be another life in there so we put it right through the shredder if you don't have a shredder that's no problem you can just sit and rip it up i've done that before and the next prep will show you how to do that as well so the first thing we're going to do is get our blender together and get our adult supervision because since we're dealing with very fast moving sharp blades we want to keep everyone safe and we're going to put our paper into the blender to decide how much you want i'm going to put about i'm gonna aim for two cups so about two cups not super tightly packed and you can put it right inside [Music] so depending on how much paper you put in there you're going to put double that amount of water so if i put two cups of paper i'm going to want two times two cups of water so that's four [Music] two cups two more cups and then we're going to start to blend please note that we have not put our wildflower seeds inside yet because if you put them in and blend them you will very well damage your seeds [Music] now that we have blended up our paper into a nice liquidy pulp with no real recognizable huge pieces or chunks of paper and everything's kind of a uniform size we're going to strain it get out any extra [Music] moisture again please be very careful if you are dealing with sharp blades always do this after you have already unplugged your blender or food processor [Music] and let that drain [Music] you can even help it out a little bit like pushing it down [Music] getting all that extra water out i use somewhat warm water not hot enough to burn myself but warm enough to kind of keep things nice and smooth cold water can kind of seize things up a little bit you don't really want that so once you've strained it we're going to discard all of that water and put all the pulp i'm making a very small batch here because i've already done this and i only want to use those three cookie cutters that i brought but you can see the consistency here it is a little chunky i can still even read some of the words on the paper but i think that's cool because i'll still be able to see that this is recycled paper now that we have strained our paper pulp of all the extra water it's time to add our seeds this is not an exact science i used about a cup of paper to come out with this much pulp so i'm going to use about a tablespoon of these seeds but i'm not going to measure it i'm just going to use a pinch like that i think a little more than that is a tablespoon but again it really depends on what kind of seeds you have these ones are pretty big seeds if you have smaller seeds you may want to add more really depends on how you want your paper to come out and you just gently mix it together you can use a spoon or your fingers kind of has a cool blue color the paper all of these different papers have mixed to make that nice color get a nice even mixture of your seeds [Music] and at this point you would add food coloring if you want to do that if you don't want to or you don't have it it is not a big deal but i happen to have some food coloring for decorating cakes at home so i'm going to take a little less than half [Music] squeeze out some of the water and put it in a different container i think i'm going to go with red for this you only need a few drops [Music] and then mix it together again you can use gloves if you'd like i'm just going to go right ahead mix it with my fingers now that we've totally prepared our paper pulp we have added the wildflower seeds and whatever food coloring we might want to put in there we are ready to put that paper into our molds but we need to set up our space first so we're going to need a towel and a baking tray i'm going to put the towel right on top this is just for storage if you use the food coloring boot don't forget that if it were blue on a red towel it might stain it you might not be super happy about that although they should come out just be aware of that we're gonna cover our towel with some plastic wrap [Music] once our plastic wrap is down we're going to put our cookie cutters right on top once they're on top we can decide which paper pulp we want to go inside of which one so i think that i would like a red squirrel and i'm going to take a pulp squeeze out the extra moisture [Music] just start to place it right inside [Music] you want a nice thin layer because the thicker it is the longer it'll take to dry and that causes its own problems look at that i don't know i have enough paper that's red so that's not a problem i'm going to just grab some of this regular colored paper and add it in my squirrel can be multi-colored as you're pressing this in make sure that you're doing it tightly and packing it in to all of your different cracks and crevices here so that all the details of your creature can [Music] show if you don't actually have any cookie cutters or any molds or can't think of anything to use it's totally fine because you can do the same exact process but making a flat layer on the plastic just using your hand and pushing it out the same rules apply you'll want to do about a quarter of an inch of thickness make sure it's nice and packed down and then you'll be able once it dries to just tear it into different shapes different sizes you did a really good job and made it really thin then you might even be able to cut it into different shapes and sizes [Music] once you've prepared all of your paper pulp in your molds or flat on your tray you're gonna have to let it sit you're gonna need a few days and that needs to dry pretty much as fast as possible because it's possible that if it takes a little too long your seeds might actually sprout in the paper from the moisture that it's getting so you're going to want to make sure that you're storing it in a space that is set away from your normal daily activities make sure that it has good air circulation maybe a warmer place and even if you have a hair dryer you might be able to use that to expedite the drying process and once you're ready go back in check make sure it's dry and you can see what they look like these are some that i worked on earlier this week and they are nice and dry you're gonna gently remove them by pressing down on the pulp and up on the mold and see if it took its shape oh it did it's a caterpillar that's so cute i love it and you can see the seeds quite clearly on the front and the back [Music] and once you take these all out what you do with them is up to you it's possible that you could make a hole in the top and put a string around it so that it's an ornament to give to a friend or a loved one you can put a piece of cardboard in the back maybe some recycled cardboard that you have at home and make a little card for them and give it to them and let them know that this is a plantable piece of recycled paper with wildflower seeds inside that they can plant in the earth add some soil and some water and some sunlight and you'll see the beautiful flowers grow [Music] wow making that craft was really fun and while we're waiting for it to dry we actually have time to make craft number two and it's very similar activity using paper and wildflower seeds but we have a different mold we're going to be using construction paper for this one and we're going to come out with our very own little earth seed balls i'm going to be using full construction paper because i haven't saved my construction scraps yet but if you work on crafts often you can save all the excess pieces that you don't use in a little bin and then one day you can make a recycled construction paper craft if you want but we're going to go through our materials for this activity starting with about three sheets of construction paper we'll need the wildflower seeds a container to measure your paper and your water your blender or food processor your strainer and your mixing bowl you're going to use the same tray and towel to store your earth seed balls on and then you're actually going to plant them right in a little pot with some soil so we can't make our earth seed balls from a huge piece of construction paper we need to break it down just like we had shredded paper or ripped paper for the last craft we're going to do the same thing for this one when you rip it just make sure you're doing it so this is the size of a quarter or smaller and just start ripping up your papers blue and green would obviously be a great idea for making earth's i have two different colors of blue here maybe one kind of for the clouds and one for the ocean just rip it up and put it into your measuring cup because we're going to want to soak this before we even put it into the blender [Music] do [Music] and there you have it three whole sheets of construction paper comes out to about two cups of paper which is a perfect measurement what we're going to want to do now is make sure that we soak this paper before we blend it because sometimes this paper can be a little bit tough and to pre-soak it just makes it easier on your on yourself and easier on your blender after we've let our paper sit soaking for maybe half an hour we can add it all to the blender but remember first of all we need adult supervision make sure that your blender is not plugged in when you're adding anything to it and then remember our measurements so we're going to need double the amount of water that we have of paper so i have two cups of paper i'm gonna make sure that i have four cups of water [Music] [Music] you want to blend this just for long enough that you don't have huge chunks but what i have found is that some construction paper is stiffer and heartier than others so you can see that the green really ground down to a pulp but the bright purple blue kind of didn't but that is quite all right what we're going to do next again being very careful not to put our fingers on any sort of sharp blades or anything like that it's we're going to strain out all the excess water [Music] you can help it along pushing the pulp around really getting the water [Music] out then we'll dispose of this water [Music] and put our pulp right in that bowl and once our pulp is in the bowl we're going to add our wildflower seeds so remember you don't add it before it blends because that will definitely damage your seeds add it afterwards and you can be pretty liberal and add quite a bit of these seeds [Music] and then you'll just use your hands to mix them together or a spoon if that's what you like make sure they're mixed nice and evenly throughout your pulp [Music] we're just going to come right over here to the baking tray right where our dog and squirrel are hanging out from the last craft and this one is a lot simpler we're just going to use our hands to gently squeeze out some of the extra water and then kind of like as if you were making a meatball make it into a nice circle don't forget to continue to squeeze out that extra water because if it is waterlogged and there's lots and lots of moisture in there it's going to have a hard harder time drying and there's my first earth you'll continue this process until you're all out of construction paper my earth's come out a little bit wonky because of how the blue and the green papers are different but i think that's pretty cool for mine maybe you can get yours a little smoother a little less chunky unless you like it this way that works out great too our very last step once our earths have dried you can see there there's no moisture left they're nice and hard so you're gonna just dig a little hole in your pot push your earth down inside cover it with soil remember to water it put it in the sun in a windowsill and watch those beautiful sprouts come wow you all did such a great job and i really hope that you had a good time doing it i sure did i really appreciate you crafting along with me today and if you're interested in any more virtual and soon-to-be in-person programs please check out our website at si greenbelt.org as you know we have a youtube channel at the staten island greenbelt we also have facebook and instagram presences so that you can stay easily connected with us so thank you so much for joining us and remember that every day is earth day not just today you

Channel: The Staten Island Greenbelt

Views: 19,004

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Id: 7SeHtYP8zdA

Length: 23min 32sec (1412 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021