Reusing Leftover Styrofoam

For our printmaking projects we used a lot of styrofoam. We are all aware that our planet is at full capacity with single use plastics and styrofoam is another one of those materials that is no bueno for our environment since it takes so long to decompose. I wanted to create additional special projects to show my students ways we could reuse materials we have already used, or small scraps of materials that are usually considered trash. 

With my youngest students, 4 (5 Korean age) we made a styrofoam mobile. We cut  and colored the styrofoam we drew our patterns on.

 

The project I worked on with my 6 and 7 year old students (Korean age) was making stamps with pencils and markers out of the scraps I collected from cutting the styrofoam. I wanted to create a project they could recreate at home with simple materials: markers and pencils. Students drew their stamp on the styrofoam. Then they colored with the markers and quickly pressed their stamp on the paper.  

             

The lesson was successful. I think, in the future, I will add additional steps or more projects so students can understand that there are many ways to help our planet by reducing how much we waste.