Egg Carton Recycled Easter Crafts

After you boil all your Easter eggs what do you do with the egg carton? The possibilities are endless! I am going to show you a few ideas for recycled and eco-friendly Easter crafts, including a flower, a bunny rabbit, a cat, and a caterpillar.

Flower

Cut out one of the cups from the egg carton. Every egg carton has a slightly different shape but you should get a flower-like shape after cutting. You may have to cut it a bit more to form the petals.

Use a sharp instrument to poke two holes at the bottom of the flower. Then you will thread a chenille stem through one hole and back out the other hole.

Twist the two ends together to form the stem.

My daughter painted the flower and glued a pom pom in the middle. This is the finished product:

Caterpillar

Cut the egg carton down the middle lengthwise to make this caterpillar. You can add more cups to make it longer. Let your kids have fun painting and decorating it!

Cat

For the cat you will need two cups - one for the head and one for the body/legs. Make sure to cut the legs to be the same length otherwise it won't stand.

For the head you use another cup and you may have to cut and shape the ears.

Glue or staple the head and legs together.

Let your child paint the cat, add eyes, whiskers, tail, and any other accessories.

Rabbit

The rabbit is the same as the cat except the ears are longer.

Paint it, add eyes, whiskers, a pom pom tail and anything else your child wants!

DIY Recycled Raisin Box Puzzle

You know those little raisin boxes that kids love to hold and eat out of? Instead of throwing them away, let's reuse them and turn them into puzzles! I created a cute 12 piece farm puzzle that you can use. All you need is 12 raisin boxes, scissors and glue. This is a great project for Earth Day or for any day!

 You can use any brand of raisins, the standard size boxes, which are either 1 oz or 1.5 oz. They are the same size in length and width, just different thickness.

This is the brand I used, but like I said, you can use any brand, for example those red Sun Maid boxes are fine.

Once you have 12 boxes you can just print and cut the puzzle and glue each piece to the boxes.

And that's it! Wasn't that easy? Now if you want, you could use Velcro on the sides of the boxes to hold it together as your child completes the puzzle, but it's not necessary at all.

As an eco-friendly alternative to the free printable, you could find a picture in a magazine or newspaper and use that for the puzzle!

Download your Raisin Box Puzzle Here

Recycling Sorting Free Printable

Celebrate Earth Day and teach your kids about recycling with this free printable sorting activity!

  

Instead of categorizing the recyclables by material, ie. plastic, glass, metal, etc, I felt it would be simpler for a young child to understand recycling in terms of everyday objects that they are already familiar with: bottles, paper, cans & boxes. They will begin to see these items as things that can be recycled.

This activity comes with 2 levels of difficulty. For toddlers and very young children, the items to be sorted are all the same as the sample picture, and the child sorts by matching. For preschoolers or older kids, the items in each category are different and the child has to first determine what each item is and then what category it belongs in.

I recommend that you laminate and use Velcro for this activity. However, this can also be done using 4 baskets or containers and the child sorts the pictures into the correct container.

Click Here to Download your Free Printable Recycling Sorting Activity!

Free Earth Day Pack for Toddlers & PreK

Celebrate Earth Day with your toddlers and preschoolers with this fun set of 16 printable activities featuring letter sounds, pre-writing, word tracing, puzzles, do-a-dot, lacing, counting, number recognition, patterns, visual discrimination matching, and more!

Click Here to Download your FREE Earth Day Pack Here!

For more Earth Day printable activities, see the following posts:

Recycling Sorting

Earth Q-Tip Painting

Earth Day Alphabet & Number Puzzles

Free Earth Day Puzzles for Kids

I am very excited to introduce my next guest blogger, Malia from Playdough to Plato. I'm a huge fan of her blog, where she shares tons of free printables and hands-on learning activities for preschool, kindergarten and first grade. She is here today with a set of fabulous and free Earth Day puzzles!

Earth Day Puzzles:

As a former kindergarten teacher turned hands-on mom, I get a little bit giddy about creating fun ways for my kids to learn. These free Earth Day puzzles are a simple way to learn some ways to help the environment AND practice ABC and 123 order at the same time.

Getting Ready:

Prepping the puzzles couldn't get much simpler. I printed a copy of the puzzles { HERE } on cardstock to give them extra durability and cut along the thin grey lines to separate the strips. Easy peasy.

My boys and I have talked about Earth Day before so they knew it was a celebration of all-things environmentally-friendly. We worked together to brainstorm a long list of different ways we can help the planet: picking up litter, watering trees, recycling...

Then I showed the boys the mixed up puzzles and invited them to sort the pieces into the correct order, building a photo of one awesome Earth Day activity we'd work on together. I gave each excited child a scrambled puzzle. Piece by piece, they started building.

And in just a couple minutes, both puzzles were complete.

I slid the pieces into separate snack-sized Ziplocs and placed them in my bag so I could easily entertain the boys when we’re waiting in doctors’ offices, restaurants… you name it! Then we set out to make a positive impact on the planet by taking our plastics to the outdoor recycling bin and hunting down the perfect spot for a new tree. Happy Earth Day!

Meet Malia:

Malia is a National Board Certified teacher turned hands-on mom to three little ones {ages 5, 3 and 1}. When she's not digging in sandboxes or playing with paint, she's sharing fun learning activities on her site, Playdough to Plato. Hop over and grab all of her FREE printables - including a super popular Matchbox car alphabet tracing book and road trip activity pack!

Earth Q-Tip Painting Free Printable

Q-Tip painting is a fun and challenging fine motor activity for kids. Since my daughter loved the Christmas and Valentine's Day Q-tip painting printables, I created one in celebration of Earth Day. This is a great way to spark discussions about geography, science and nature while painting in a unique way!

This is such a quick activity to set up. Just print out this sheet, grab some q-tips and paint, and you have an educational and fun activity for your child!

Click here to Download your Free Earth Q-Tip Printable!

For more Earth Day activities, check out the Free Earth Day Activity Pack:

For more ideas and printables for learning with Q-Tips, see the following post: 20 Learning Activities with Q-Tips

20+ Free Earth Day Printables for Kids

Today I am featuring over 20 educational Earth Day printables and printable packs for preschool and kindergarten kids.

Printable Packs:

Earth Day Activity Pack by Totschooling
Earth Day Picture & Word Tracing by Totschooling
30 Page Free Earth Day Pack by Happy and Blessed Home 
Earth Day Do-a-Dot Printable Pack by Gift of Curiosity
Earth Day Packs by Royal Baloo
Earth Day Learning Pack by 3 Dinosaurs
Earth Day Printables by Homeschool Encouragement
Earth Day Printables by Wise Owl Factory

Printable Learning Activities:

Sorting Recyclables by Totschooling
Earth Day Letter & Number Puzzles by Totschooling
Waste Sorting Sensory Bin with printable by One Time Through
Earth Day Recycling Sorting Activity by A Little Pinch of Perfect
DIY Raisin Box Puzzle with printable by Totschooling
Earth Q-Tip Painting Printable by Totschooling
Earth Day Bingo by Gift of Curiosity
Earth Month Scavenger Hunt by Edventures with Kids
Earth Day Memory Game by Learn Create Love
Earth Day Action Reminder Cards by Cutting Tiny Bites
Earth Day Board Game by Play 2 Learn with Sarah

Earth Day Picture & Word Tracing

Practice handwriting and fine motor skills with these FREE Earth themed printables, featuring the Earth and recycling symbols. Trace a word (upper or lower case) and then trace the picture and color it in!

These FREE Earth Day Picture and Word Tracing printables are perfect for children learning to write. This pack includes 4 different sheets, all with the option to practice upper or lower case letters. After tracing the word, children will enjoy tracing the picture and coloring it in. 

Click Here to Download your FREE Earth Day Tracing

For more handwriting practice that includes reading and tracing CVC words, see our CVC Word & Picture Tracing Cards.

Earth Day CVC Recycling Activity

These fun CVC letter segmenting activity will have kids engaged and working on their short vowel words in no time! Practice CVC word building, reading and writing with this fun earth day or recycling themed activity. Perfect for kindergarten or intervention kids in first grade.

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

To prepare:

• Printer
• Paper or card stock
• Laminator (optional)
• Scissors

Print as many sets as you need for the number of students in your class. If you are using these in a center, it’s a great idea if you have an extra set just in case you want another group to get started on the cards. There are 12 CVC puzzle cards (2 or 3 sets for each of the vowels). There are also optional B&W cards.

Earth Day CVC Word Building

This free printable earth day activity comes with colourful CVC recycling bin cards. Students will practice CVC building skills, word reading, and letter sounds as they identify each letter needed for the picture found on the ‘recycling bin’ and to form the word. I would begin by pointing to the CVC picture and letting the students have a go at identifying it before beginning to look for the letter sounds.

After you’ve printed, laminated and cut the cards as well at the letter pieces. Have the students work on one card at a time and have the letter pieces shown clearly on the table as they choose the letters to build their CVC words. Kids love and usually respond really well to themed literacy activities and this one has a great earth day recycling theme. If kids have just started to learn about earth day and recycling, this is a great activity to incorporate in your literacy centers. I use these cards with my ESL students too. To help simplify this activity further with my ELLs, I usually write the CVC words on a whiteboard to give them a guide as they look for the letter sounds to build their words.

Click Here to Download your FREE Recycling CVC Activity

This post was contributed by:


Yara from Sea of Knowledge
Founder of Sea of Knowledge, an ESL teacher with a passion for making learning fun and engaging. She loves creating fun activities that children and learners can benefit from. You can also find me on: Facebook and Pinterest.

Happy Earth vs. Sad Earth Sorting Activity

Use this Earth Day sorting activity to teach kids about the environment, pollution, conservation and the different ways we can take care of our planet.

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Materials Needed:

• Printer
• Paper or card stock
• Laminator (optional)
• Scissors

Earth Day Sorting Activity

This FREE printable activity is a great way for kids to learn and talk about some of the things that make the Earth "happy" and "sad". You can use it as a sorting activity or even display it on a bulletin board and have a discussion about it.

There are 6 cards that show children how to take care of our planet through conservation, recycling, cleaning, reusing and planting. There is another set of 6 cards that introduces children to air, water and land pollution.

Click Here to Download your FREE Happy Earth vs. Sad Earth Sorting