Step 1 — collect. Pick four or five things that are being thrown away: dry leaves, flower petals, an old greeting card, a cardboard box, straws, twigs, bottle caps, buttons, bits of wool.
Step 2 — make. Decide on one picture or object and stick the items down on a card. Some easy ideas: a peacock whose tail is made of dry leaves; a village hut of twigs and straw; a tree whose trunk is torn brown paper and whose leaves are green petals; a pen stand covered with old card and buttons.
Step 3 — write. Your paragraph needs four things:
- A title.
- What you made and what you made it from.
- How you made it, step by step, using first, after that, next, finally.
- Why you like it, or what it means.
A Peacock from a Waste Basket
I made a peacock using five things that were on their way to the dustbin — a piece of cardboard from a shoe box, dry leaves from our courtyard, blue wool, two black buttons and an old birthday card. First I cut the cardboard into a square and painted it white. After that I drew the peacock's body and stuck strips of the blue birthday card over it. Next I fixed twelve dry leaves in a wide fan for the tail and glued a small circle of blue wool at the tip of each leaf, so that the tail seemed to have eyes. Finally I pressed the two black buttons in place for the eyes and drew a thin yellow beak. I like my peacock because everything in it had been thrown away, and yet together the pieces make something that everyone in my class stopped to look at.