Make Your Own Notepad

What You Need:

• 3–4 brown paper bags
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Hole punch
• Ribbon

What You Do:

1. Invite your child to open up and lay flat the brown paper bags. Encourage her to use the scissors to cut the edges as well as the bottoms off of the bags. She can also remove the handles, too.
2. Now she’ll decide how big she’d like her notepad to be. She can use a ruler to draw a rectangle on one of the edges of paper bag. Not only is she getting crafty, she’s honing her math skills too!
3. Use a ruler to cut out a rectangle of the size she likes. This will be the template for the rest of the sheets for her notepad. She can stack together two or three sides of the bags, position the original rectangle trace around it, and then cut more stacked rectangles.
4. Once she has cut several rectangles for her notepad, she can tap them together into a clean stack and use a hole punch to create two holes at the top of the pages making sure the holes line up! Encourage your child to take her time and concentrate!
5. Now she can lace a string or ribbon through the holes and tie tightly to finish off her recycled paper bag notepad. All that’s left is to write down a few notes!

Did You Know:

The first paper bag was invented in 1852 by the American inventor, Francis Wolle? His paper bag machine paved the way for the paper bag we know and use today!