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.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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