Five Green Craft Ideas for Kids

Guest Author Louise Blake is a Mum of one who works part time as a Design Account Manager. She loves spending as much time as she can with her family and enjoys blogging about her experiences.

Crafts Using Recycled Materials

As parents we’re always looking for new ways to encourage our kids to be creative. Here are five recyclable craft ideas that your children will love.

Some of the best play resources for children can be found in the recycling bin. They’re free, there’s plenty to choose from and they allow your children’s creativity to soar. Plus, you can give all that abandoned rubbish a second lease of life.

Of course, be sure to check for any sharp edges or mouldy food residue before handing them over to the children! Save the environment one recycled shoe box at a time with these handy ideas for you and your family to get stuck into.

Sock Puppet Image by Philip Dean

Egg Carton Furniture

Image by Vanessa Vancour

A couple of empty egg cartons, a dash of paint and maybe some glitter and you’re in business. Here’s a really simple way for your kids to fashion their own doll house décor that they can later use in their pretend play.

From seats to tables, you can build an entire (green alternative) dolls house for your children to enjoy and work on. If possible try and scavenge some left over fabrics, even old clothes, to chop up and use in the decorating stage.

Playdough

Image by Dennis Brekke

Who doesn’t love playdough? There is no simpler substance you can use that’ll keep you children entertained for hours on end. What’s more, you can reuse it as many times as you wish.

Made with all natural ingredients, any parent can whip this up in a flash for their children to use; you could even rope them in to help. With the addition of fruits and spices you can naturally dye your playdough making it safe for the younger ones to use.

Revitalised Books

Image by Susana Fernandez

Sometimes kids can get a little too enthusiastic about (or around) books. Pages get torn, juice gets spilt and before you know it – there’s another collection of books destined for the bin. Well, stop right there. Should some pages still be legible here is a tip you can try to get the most out of damaged books.

After cutting out words individually, try laminating them afterwards if you can to make them more hard-wearing, and then – you can use them for word games. Ask your children to build sentences from the collection of words they have – they could even formulate a short story. This idea is a fun educational excursion for them and a money-saver for you.

Musical Bottles

Image by Dave Crosby

In America alone we use 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour, most of which are thrown away. So isn’t it about time we tried to reuse some of them? As it turns out, plastic bottles can be a fantastic resource for children to use in craft. You can transform them into spaceships and boats – or you can get musical with them.

By filling a plastic bottle (which you can get the kids to decorate first) with seeds, lentils or a similar alternative, you can fashion your very own maraca or rattle. This provides your kids with the ideal instrument that they can use to shake to the beat of their favourite songs.

Sock Puppets

Image by Philip Dean

Often we find our kids go through socks at an astonishing rate, and there’s always one of the pair that goes missing. However, these odd socks can make fantastic puppets that can both be a fun craft activity and a great tool for story-telling. If you make several of them, you could even hold your own puppet show.

First attach a pair of googly eyes or buttons and then use your hand to make a mouth which you can blacken out for effect. Afterwards apply felt or fabric to bring your sock to life, giving them their own little personalities.

Children have astonishing creative abilities, so why spend extensive amounts of money on toys when they can fashion their own? Of course, be sure to make sure your craft table is protected with a felt table protector to stop the children applying their creative ideas to the rest of the house! But next time you’re taking out the trash, keep a selection of those bottles and boxes back for the craft cupboard. You’ll be glad you did.

Do you have any green craft ideas to contribute? Maybe you and your kids gave one of the above a go and want to showcase your creative work? Comment below, or add your link to the Preschool Crafts Link-Up or Kids’ Crafts Link-Up!