We’re gearing up to start our school year this next Monday, which means I’m busy finishing up the great school-supply reset. I’ve been going through the house and collecting all the school- and office-related detritus and attempting to sort it all back to where it belongs.
I’ve just been throwing caps onto markers willy-nilly and stuffing them into a can – but today was the day to go through them all and see if they actually write.
Several dozen didn’t. But since the kids were clamoring to paint, I decided to try an experiment. I had the kids sort the spent markers by color and we stuck the tips in water in baby food jars for a half hour. Not-quite-instant watercolors!
We painted at least one page per person before lunch, at which point there was still plenty of “paint” left. So I pulled out the rice that’s been sitting on the kitchen counter for an embarrassing length of time after the girls stuck their unwashed hands in it while making rice bags (so I didn’t want us to eat it!) A cup of rice in a jar plus what was left of the most brilliant paints (blue, orange, black, and brown were standout favorites). Shake, shake, shake and dump onto a dehydrator tray to stick in the dehydrator along with a batch of yogurt.
I still had dye left so I went hunting for more ways to use it up. Here, I have some orzo in the cupboard from a recipe I tried years ago and some macaroni from when the neighbor was cleaning out her pantry. Shake, shake, shake.
Once the rice and pasta were all dry (much more quickly than I expected), I poured them into old two and four ounce breastmilk bottles acrued while we had little ones in the NICU. Now that Moriah’s here and it’s clear I’m not needing to pump, I can get rid of my surplus. I already gave 60 to our preschool program director at church to make rhythm shakers for preschool music – but I’ve still got several dozen and my own preschoolers could use some shakers for school this year.
Because I’m going to be doing preschool with three this year. Reuel and Shiloh are clearly ready for pre-K, but now that Frank is finally starting to talk he’s also demonstrating that he’d really like to join in with school too – at the very least, with the songs and finger plays and rhymes.
So there we have it. I’m not sure exactly how many birds that is, but we got a lot accomplished out of figuring out which markers were still usable today. Painting with the children. Making shakers for preschool. Using up some loose pantry items. Using up some leftover breastmilk storage containers. And, turns out, about a half dozen of the markers revived after soaking (all half dozen were thick tip Crayolas) and were able to return to use.
Hooray for a productive day!