Upcycled Crafts to Make for Earth Day

Using upcycled materials in crafts and projects is a great idea any time of year, but it’s especially appropriate around Earth Day. (One of the most popular posts ever on my blog Our Daily Craft is a building challenge made with upcycled materials.)

Making a pencil jar is a classic upcycled art project, and you can learn how to do it with a glass jar and tissue paper from In the Playroom. You could also paint the jars, decorate them with other paper images or whatever you like. Use them for pencils, paint brushes, or anything else small you need to hold.

Use bits of colorful paper from the recycling to make a recycling logo collage with this idea from Crafts On Sea. This would be fun to hang in your recycling area in the classroom or at home, and of course you can make collages like this with all sorts of themes when you’re done with this poster. (You could also do it with fabric scraps.)

While you’re using up colorful paper or fabric scraps, you can also make upcycled beads to use in jewelry projects. Kids Activities Blog has the how-to done with strips of magazines, but I’ve done the same thing with fabric and it always comes out cool looking.

If your classroom or home library has some books that are past their prime, you can upcycle them to make bookmarks. Kelly’s Classroom has the simple tutorial. If you don’t have a laminator you can buy bookmark sleeves or cover the bookmarks with clear packing tape.

Making paper mache is a great way to use old newspapers, and Red Ted Art ties it into Earth Day with a project to make paper mache planets. Make just the earth or a whole solar system!

I’ve seen a lot of crafts that call for using cardboard egg cartons, but you don’t see a lot that use the plastic ones. (We did a plastic egg carton musical instrument once.) But you can make necklaces with plastic egg cartons similar to using purchased shrink plastic. Check out how to make your own at Little Bins for Little Hands.

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Celebrate Earth Day with Kids

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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