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

The celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Her feast day is Dec. 12, and the celebrations honoring her appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 begin a few days before that.

Whether you celebrate yourself or just want to share about the celebration at home or in your classroom, Las Mañanitas: The Beautiful Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a good place to start. The book, by Ernesto Joel Vega Rosales and Jeanette Gonzalez Seneviratne, with illustrations by Dana Sanmar, tells the story of a family’s celebration of the feast day in both English and Spanish.

They prepare with a novena, which is nine days of prayers and preparations. The children, Lucia and Pablo, are given special outfits made by their grandmother that look like what Juan Diego might have worn when he saw Our Lady. The book describes the prayers that are made each day, such as a prayer for respect for life, for families and for the indigenous people of the Americas, to name a few.

As told in the book, Juan Diego was a native Mexican born near modern day Mexico City. His given name was Cuaauhtlatoatzin, which means “He who speaks like an eagle.” When he converted to Christianity his name was changed to Juan Diego, and as he walked to church he passed a hill called Tepeyac. One day he heard the birds singing especially beautifully and a voice called him to go to the top of the hill.

There he saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, who asked him to tell the bishop she wanted a chapel built in her name at the foot of the hill. The bishop asked for a sign that Juan Diego really saw her, and later she had him collect flowers that she blessed and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego dropped the flowers, an image of Our Lady could be seen on his cloak, which is still on display in her basilica to this day.

The feast day is celebrated as mañanitas, which includes singing, indigenous music and dancing, and children presenting flowers to Our Lady. Juan Diego is remembered today as being humble, brave and faithful, and was the first indigenous American made a saint.

The book is colorful and tells the story in a clear way, and it’s fun to have it both in English and Spanish if you teach Spanish or speak Spanish at home or in the classroom. It’s a great way to learn the basics of the celebration and the story of Juan Diego and why he is still remembered today.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Loyola Press. Suggested retail price $14.99.

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Have you read?

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