King Jeffery the Recycle Monster!

I'm taking a class this semester called "Creative and Sensory Experiences for Young Children."  Our big project for the semester is one where we work with a group to create a creature that we could design an entire unit on.  We have to create a story about our creature and come up with math, science, social studies, and literacy lesson ideas that somehow incorporate the creature.

My group created a "Recycle Monster" that we named King Jeffery the Fourth.  He is the king of Recycle-topia, where everyone LOVES to recycle!  BUT!  Poor King Jeffery, because lately people have been feeding Mr. Trash all of King Jeffery's favorite foods (cans and bottles).  To make the king happy again, we have to feed him his favorite foods instead of giving them to Mr. Trash.

The picture came out blurry, but here I was painting the cardboard box we used for his head.  We painted with sponges, paint brushes, and our hands.

We used a copy of our school newspaper as paper mache to cover the trash can we used as the base for King Jeffery.  We dyed our paper mache with food coloring, which was messy but worth it.

Making sure the crown would fit.

Close up of King Jeffery's face.  We made our own googly-eyes using water bottles!  We painted the caps black, and cut of the bottoms of the bottles.  We hot glued them to him.
Feeding King Jeffery!  See his bow tie?  It's made from soda wrappers.
Our story about King Jeffery.

I don't have a picture of our book because we haven't finished it yet.  Making King Jeffery was super fun, and something I think would be really cool if I could find a way to do it as a whole class activity when I have my own classroom some day.  I love the way the trashcan looks covered in the paper mache.  That's something I would honestly do in my own house someday.  The story is simple, but we had to remember that we're going to be reading it to the kids at the daycare center on campus, and will most likely be reading it to 2-4 year olds.

My group and I already have quite a few ideas for lessons we could make that involve Jeffery in some way!

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