Book Review: Upcycle It! Crafts for Kids

Crafty pro Jennifer Perkins offers lots of ideas for crafts kids can make with materials that would otherwise be on the way to the trash or recycling bins in her book Upcycle It! Crafts for Kids.

The book covers the basic supplies you need to get started making upcycled crafts as well as some of the happy trash you might want to start collecting in order to make the projects.

In all there are 25 projects organized by theme including items for organizing your space, decorating your room, school supplies, adding a personalized touch to objects and making gifts.

There’s a lot of fun stuff here, from a lamp made out of a green plastic bottle to DIY food wraps to a picture frame covered in tiny toys.

The projects are rated for kids 8-12, but there are things even older kids might benefit from being supervised with. Younger kids could also make some of these projects (stamped fabric bags or a T-shirt rug, for example) with help from parents with cutting.

My daughter is 12 and while she has made projects similar to some of these before, I think she’d have a lot of fun with these ideas and be able to do a lot of them herself. Whether with a parent’s help or crafting solo, these fun ideas are sure to get kids a little more interested in what’s going into the recycling bin and how those items can be creatively reused.

About the book: 114 pages, 25 projects, paperback. Published by Rockridge Press March 2022. Suggested retail $12.99

Next Plan Idea:

Upcycled Crafts to Make for Earth Day

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply