Green Art Projects for Kids
They say that the way to ensure that a child becomes a responsible adult is to raise them to be one. This can be exceptionally tricky, especially if you’re a busy parent with only just so many hours a day to enjoy your child. But it is definitely possible, especially if you decide to teach them things while having fun together. The more fun something is the more children want to do it and they tend to remember it longer. Take art projects for example. Most children love to get their hands—and often times half of their bodies— dirty doing art projects. Parents can have fun doing art projects as well. By combining lessons on keeping the earth clean and safe, or going “green” with the art projects you enjoy with your children, you’ve got a great way to help them learn about saving the earth.
Fun Projects
There are all sorts of projects that you can do with your children that are both fun and green. The first thing that you may want to consider is what you can do in your own home. Think about the things that you currently have around your home that you can reuse such as magazines. If you’re someone who reads an occasional magazine, you may not even think about how you can reuse it, but you can! Children that are able to cut out paste can have a blast making collages with the pictures that are found inside magazines. And you can even use magazine pictures to cover various items, such as tin cans or blocks of wood and then transform them into pencil holders or paperweights. Make sure, of course, that you pick cool pictures, and that you and your child cut them out together.
If you’re looking to do something that requires a bit more planning, you can still reuse and recycle things. In fact, make that the theme of your art projects: how can you reuse and recycle things to create art? You may be absolutely shocked at how inventive your children are when it comes to ways you can reuse things in your home.
If you’ve got an old sock and you know that you don’t want to use it anymore, how about making a snowman out of it? If there aren’t any holes in the feet, it’s ok to use it even if the top is a bit raggedy. Simply take some uncooked rice that you have in your cupboard (one-minute rice is best) and fill the sock. Next, tie the sock into a knot at the top and use a scrap of colorful fabric that you have around the house to make the large lumpy sock into two separate bumps, creating the head and the body, with the fabric acting as a scarf. Your child can then cut fringe on the end of the fabric to make it look more like a scarf. To finish the snowman’s body, simply flip the top of the sock down over the knot and you’ve got a hat! Add eyes and a mouth with some recycled buttons, if you wish, and you’ve got a great, adorable snowman that is made out of things that you already had in your home.
Does your child like to feed the birds? You can make a birdfeeder using recycled items from your home very easily. Gather some small paper plates, some cardboard rolls from toilet paper or paper towels, paint, yarn, glue, scissors, a hole punch, and some paint brushes and you’re ready to begin. If you use the larger paper towel rolls, feel free to cut them in half. Let your children decorate the paper towel rolls with the paint. Let them do the same for the small paper plate. Then, after they have dried, use the hole punch to make a triangle at the bottom of the roll on one end. Make sure the holes are distributed evenly as this will be where the feeder is held.
On the other end of the roll, cut out two small half-circles. This is where the seeds will fall onto the plate, so make sure that the circles aren’t too large. Next, glue the paper towel or toilet paper roll that your child has decorated (the half circles on the bottom) onto the plate. You will need to stand this up while it dries. Once it’s dry, put the string through the holes at the top. This is the section that will be hung from a tree. Pour some bird seed into the toilet paper holder and put it out for all the birds to enjoy!
Teaching children how to reduce, reuse, and recycle can be great fun, and parents are often surprised to find, when they undertake these crafts, that they have just as much fun as their children do!