K-cups/Coffee related concoctions and Water Beads.

I saw a post from a page I follow on Facebook. The page is called Happy Hooligans, and this is the post I saw. I asked the always helpful parents in my class if they would save their K-cups, and they sure did deliver!

When I counted approximately  50 or so cups, I emailed and said that I have plenty of cups now! The synagogue also uses a Keurig and they're saving their cups for me too, so we're set! It took me about 45 minutes to go thorough each cup and extract the coffee; The Red Room smelled like a coffee house! My hands smelled like caffeine for hours! I got SO much coffee from the cups! 

The next day, I took the coffee that I had kept in the refrigerator over night and made Coffee Play dough using two different recipes. The first one was:
2 cups used coffee grounds
1 and 1/2 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup salt
water
flour
Mix all ingredients until pliable. Add water, flour as needed to achieve a working consistency.

That recipe made for a muddy play dough that crumbled easily and was more like sandy dough than play dough. The kids still thoroughly enjoyed using it, but the next recipe was much more effective at being play dough and not getting grounds on the children's hands.

• 2 cups of flour
• 1 cup of salt
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup ground coffee  
• 1 1/2 cups boiling water

• Mix well and voila, Coffee Play Dough!

The coffee play dough was great as a table top activity. The first K-cup sensory table activity we did was simply playing with the cups themselves. 

Another fun use for used coffee grounds is Coffee Sand. For this, I place the coffee grounds on a baking sheet that's lined with foil. I bake at 200 degrees for about an hour. Next I mix it with equal parts coffee grounds, corn meal and salt. We put it in the sensory table. It's so soft, but also feels like sand. As you can imagine, it smells incredible! 

We used water beads the next day. We put them in and let them sit in the water over night. Then we let the children explore them for about 30 minutes with just their hands. When it was obvious that they were just aiming to knock the beads on the floor, we took out the K-cups and let the children measure, pour, sort and of course, squish the water beads. 

We have the water beads in the table sitting over the weekend. On Monday, we will add shaving cream to the water beads to let the children explore two different textures. 

xoxo,

GG