Tea-Stained Treasure Maps

Working with materials that are normally not touched is oh-so-appealing for my children. When I brought our tea bags for this craft, they were intrigued and immediately loved the idea! Our tea-stained paper was very fun to make and came out so pretty. This time we used ours for fun maps, but I think this paper would make pretty cards as well.
How we did it:
Materials List
- card stock (or other heavy paper, like water color paper)
- tea bags
- hot water
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I went through our tea stash to find a few different kinds for the kids to experiment with. I placed the tea bags in some hot water while I gathered some thick paper and the children!
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Once the tea cooled down a bit, I let the kids choose their tea bags and they began to drip the tea over the paper and press the bags on the paper.
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My two-year-old really enjoyed exploring this new texture and new way of making color on paper.
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We had a bag break (yep, my two-year-old's doing) and it added a great speckled look to the paper. We set all the paper outside to dry.
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Once dry my five-year-old new exactly what she was going to do with her paper...a pirate's map, of course! She drew a fun map and crinkled up the paper to create that authentic treasure map look...
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This went from a morning craft to an afternoon of imaginative play that lasted well into the evening.