With Earth Day this month, it is time to think about how to upcycle various things around our homes. Not only do you recycle, but you get the kids to be creative and crafty!
Crayons
Each year, Crayola celebrates Earth Day by sharing crafts with families that encourage upcycling, recycling, and teaching kids habits that will help them care for our planet. This year, they featured a variety of new projects, including a Milk Carton Bird Feeder.
Crayola’s Create it Yourself (CIY) team also put together four fun activities to help families create masterpieces from old crayons. Whether you make melted crayon butterflies, a crayon art T-shirt, a crayon letter, or crayon canvas art, you won’t ever wonder what to do with all those crayons again.
Speaking of crayons, former Toy Insider Parent Destiny Paquette shared how to make new crayons out of old crayons in this previous post here.
DIY Beauty
I’m always looking for an excellent excuse to enjoy a little pampering. With Mother’s Day around the corner, this DIY Lemon Sage Sugar Scrub is the perfect gift for kids to make for Mom, grandmas, or aunts, with ingredients you probably have around the house. Want to target a more specific area, how about a lip balm?
Nature
With Earth Day, nothing is better than finding things in nature to repurpose in some way.
For example, find some beautiful rocks in your backyard and paint them. Check out this past Toy Insider Parent post with some ideas for painting rocks. With beautiful drawings and colors, rock painting can also bring someone joy.
Another idea is to make a fairy garden in your backyard, as well as to do a backyard photoshoot for a garden timeline. You can get some inspiration here.
Pick up a shadow box, and have the kids make a nature shadowbox. Alternatively, have them find elements in nature, like rocks, sticks, twigs, leaves, flower petals, and more. Have them make a nature sculpture with those nature finds, take a picture and frame it.
Do you have any Blume products from Skyrocket? The flower pot containers from Blume Baby Pops or Blume are great to repurpose for planting and growing your own flower or herb garden. Just add soil, a small plant, clipping, or seeds, and watch it grow!
Indoor Art
On a rainy day, consider these activities. While this post is about being thankful at Thanksgiving, it can work for any time of the year! Take a large piece of construction paper or a paper roll, and have the kids color the paper runner and make a list of what they are appreciative or thankful for too. Add some natural elements like leave rubs to make it spring themed!
What’s always fun is making slimy things! Have your kids make their own Gak with this post that shows you how to do it! Want something less slimy and softer? Check out this post on how to make your dough.
Lastly, make a wreath to put on your front door. Even though this post is a DIY on how to make a Patriotic wreath, it can ban any themed wreath you want.
Whether nature or art, gardens or gak, there is a lot of fun to be had at home!
