Financial Friday: Turn Cup Lids Into Stencils and Shapes

Part of my resolution/goal/work-in-progress for this year was organizing my kitchen. I have done some big projects and small ones. My kitchen really doesn't have a new appearance, but as month 9 of the year approaches, I am overall happy with the progress.

One organizing project needed to be the sippy-cup and restaurant take-home plastic cup section. We had so many that finding a proper lid-cup match took longer than pouring the milk. I took this moment to work on organizational skills with the kids. The kids and I sat down and sorted through the cabinet. We organized:

1. We went around the house, found stray cups, and washed them.
2. We tossed gross cups and ones with hidden cracks.
3. We lined up the cups and found matching lids.
4. We neatly put all the cups back in the cabinet.

After throwing yucky and lost cups away, we were left with about a dozen lids. I figured we could brainstorm a project using bodily-kinesthetic since they were plastic and the kids would probably play with them. Honestly, they sat on my counter for a few days until we decided what to do with them.

I decided to cut them into shapes. I used the straw hole as a starting point for the scissors. My kids know their shapes, so we didn't spend tons of time with them. I was determined to use these almost-free resources, so I kept brainstorming.

Soon, we had the paint out using them as stencils. What worked so well was that the ridge of the lid gave my kids a great place to hold so they did not scoot around.

As we continued, my two-year-old struggled a bit. She couldn't move the paint and hold the lid simultaneously.

We put the paint in the middle of the shapes instead of transferring paint from a cup to the stencil's center.

She was incredibly proud of her work. and thrilled that her shapes looked like shapes and not blobs.

The kids were giggly-excited over their work and they have no idea that the project that kept them entertained for so long was almost free.