Earth Day Thursday- Upcycle Milk Caps

 

I have a drawer full of stuff, junk some may say, but I figure if save it one day we will figure out something to do with it. Twist ties, plastic bread tags, plastic frozen juice cans, metal juice can tops, glass jars, aluminum cans, etc....

I have been saving milk tops from my glass milk bottles forever. Last week I was at an amazing education supply store and saw some fun sorting and matching games which I almost bought. Before I got to the checkout I came to my senses and realized I could make my own!

I made two games, one for sorting pictures and one for numbers and letters.

I spent some time on a Google image search and found tons of images to use.

I decided to just do the upper and lower case letters in my daughter's name, Holden, and numbers  1-10.

She spells her name with them, matches upper and lowercase letters to their partners, puts the numbers in order, and counts the appropriate number of beans to match with each number cap.

The picture game offers a few sorting choices. Grouping like items,(transportation, people, animals, fruit, toys), grouping by color, and sorting by shape of item (find all the circles, etc.).

I am really happy with how these turned out. I just printed the images, cut them out, and mod podged them onto top of each cap.

These are working for my two year old and my four year old. I just need to make more to include the letters for my son's name, so I will keep saving those caps!

The possibilities for this project are endless. The next one I want to make will include the entire alphabet and then you can have your child practice putting the letters in ABC order and building simple words you give them or building words they find in their favorite books.

You could also make one with larger numbers and include caps with dots representing each number. Then have your child match the number caps with the appropriate dot cap, and further practice adding with them.

Since the only cost for this project was a tiny bit of mod podge, printer ink, and paper, it was W-A-Y cheaper than the games I saw at the store. And I got to personalize with items, numbers, and colors that work with my kids personalities. 

I would love to hear other ideas for games and interpretations of this idea! So keep the comments coming people!