Enjoy your own rain shower without getting wet when you make this kid's craft.

I am so thrilled that spring is here, and we celebrated its arrival by making a rainstick.  Everything we needed for this craft was already around the house, and some of it was even recycled.  How’s that for getting into the spirit of April?  Not only have we covered the whole “April showers” thing, but we kind of hit on Earth Day, as well.

Once your rainstick craft is done, you can turn it from end to end and hear it “rain” as the rice inside slides from one end to the other.  I find that turning it slowly makes for a more realistic rain effect.

Related Pages: Recycled box aliens, 12 More Recycled Crafts for Kids

To make a rainstick, you will need:

• An empty paper towel roll
• Left over tissue paper
• Scissors
• White glue
• Paint brush
• Rubber bands
• Wax paper
• Aluminum foil
• Rice/Popcorn kernels (if I made another one, I would just stick with the rice because I think it sounds more like rain)

The materials for an April showers rainstick craft.

Start with a sheet of aluminum foil about 25" long.

Roll the aluminum foil into a long tube to make the interior of the rainstick craft. I wrapped ours around a dowel.

Curl the foil into a spring. Again, I used the dowel.

You'll want the final coil to be just about the length of your paper towel roll. It then gets placed inside the rainstick.

Wrap wax paper around one end of your rainstick craft, and affix it with a rubber band. I then cut off the excess.

Have your kiddo help you pour in rice, popcorn kernels, or whatever you've decided to use to make your sound effects.

Seal up the other end of your rainstick craft with wax paper and a rubber band.

Cut your tissue paper into small pieces (about an inch or so). We recycled tissue from presents we've received.

Mix white glue with a little water and use your paint brush to decoupage the tissue paper on to your rainstick.

I decoupaged the tissue paper right over the wax paper to make it less likely to come loose and fall off.

What I Learned the Hard Way: I originally had cut out wax paper circles to put over the ends, but I found them really hard to work with, so I ended up just using a bigger chunk of wax paper and cutting it after I put the rubber band on.  Also, the popcorn doesn’t sound nearly as good as the rice.

Caterpillar kids craft from an egg carton

This caterpillar is a fun recycled craft that transforms an old egg carton into a toy.  It is a fun craft for kids because it’s simple, and they have something tangible to play with when it’s done.

Related Pages: Caterpillar Math Coloring Page, Bug Coloring Pages, more Recycled Kids Crafts.

To make your caterpillar, you will need:

• An empty egg carton
• Paint
• Paint brush
• Googly eyes
• Pom poms (optional)
• Pipe cleaner
• Glue
• Scissors

Craft supplies needed to make your caterpillar

Cut off one section of the egg carton to make the caterpillar's body.

Let your little one paint the caterpillar's body.

To make the antennae, use your scissors to poke two holes in the first “bump” on your egg carton.  Fold the pipe cleaner in half, and insert one end into each hole so they stick out the top.  Twist them once so they stay in place.  I wanted to curl them around a pencil for curly antennae, but Dot insisted that they stay straight.

Adding the antennae

Glue on googly eyes and a pom pom nose for the caterpillar's face.

Let your kid decorate the caterpillar.  We glued pom poms on ours to give him some color and character.

Dot loved the finished craft project so much that she carried it around for two days and showed it off to everyone!

She was so proud of it!

What I Learned the Hard Way: So, it turns out that when you tell a three-year-old to paint something, you are likely to get a whole lot of paint in one place and not much anywhere else.  To combat this, I “helped” her paint the caterpillar’s body.

Now that school has started again, I’ve been doing a lot more crafts for teachers (ohhh, the posts that are on the way!!!). I have a few projects I need to dig up from when I used to work in day care, but this one I developed just yesterday to accompany my Lorax Activities post on Classroom Jr.

You might also love this Cat in the Hat craft as much as I do!

Lorax Activity - Truffula Trees Craft

What You Need to Make this Truffula Trees Craft

Truffula Trees Lorax Craft Materials

1 yellow and black striped pipe cleaner (found mine at Hobby Lobby – or buy animal striped pipe cleaners from Discount School Supply)

4 multi colored pom poms (to be true to The Lorax book, use yellow, red/pink, purple and orange)

Green Play Dough (here’s a gluten-free play dough alternative or make your own play dough)

A square of tissue paper for the base (really, anything can work here, including not using anything at all)

Glue

How to Make Truffula Trees

Have an adult clip the pipe cleaner into 4 segments, any length will do, and they don’t have to be even.

Pour out some glue and let the kids dip one end of the pipe cleaner into the glue, getting a good sized drop on top:

Gluing the Truffula Trees Craft

Stuff the glued end of the pipe cleaner into a pom pom – I use a hot glue gun because it’s a little easier, but even just regular Elmer’s Glue sticks remarkably well.

Repeat for the next three pom poms and pipe cleaner segments, making four Truffula Trees.

Slap the green play dough onto the tissue paper and push the sides down a little to make it look like a hill. Again, there’s no right way to do this, pretty much any slap of the dough onto a surface will look good.

Stick the four Truffula Trees into your green play dough ‘hill’.

Done!

Here are more recycled crafts for Earth Day and conservation minded peeps, plus check out these How Do Plants Grow printable activities or these Earth Day printables, too!

Craft Materials List

Colorations Wheat & Gluten-Free Dough – 5 1/2 lbs.

-

Jumbo Assorted Wild Animal Pipe Cleaners

-

Pom Pom Classroom Pack – 700 Pieces

Make a Pillbox Hat from a Microwave Dinner Tray	Recycle a Sock into a Giraffe Sock Puppet	Make Stuffed Animal Headphones Via DollarStoreCrafts	Adorable Egg Carton Crafts Roundup on The Crafty Crow
One Pretty Thing Shares 12 More Recycled Crafts!	Make Egg Carton Caterpillars	Make a Nightlight from a Recycled Crystal Light Container	Recycled Jello Box Aliens
Make a “fossil” from coffee grounds	Turn an old pair of jeans into a denim purse	Refashioned T-Shirts	Upcycled Photo Holder or Jewelry Holder

For more green goodness, check out our collection of Earth Day printables, crafts, and activities for kids from all Woo! Jr. Network websites!

10 Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan Activity Ideas

1 – Print out the color or b/w sequencing squares below twice to make a matching game.

2 – Plant seeds in newspaper seedling pots.

3 – Have children collect seeds from everyday foods to bring into the classroom for identification.

4 – Grow a Chia Pet. For added fun use seeds like alfalfa or onion so that the resulting sprouts are edible!

5 – Sprout an avocado seed.

6 – Craft Jr has several pages dedicated to nature crafts, including beach crafts, stick crafts and leaf crafts.

7 – Plant a tree in the school yard, local park, or other organization.

8 – Our school does their planting activities early in the year, and then lets the children take their full grown plants home as a Mother’s Day gift in May.

9 – Take a field trip to a local greenhouse, or ask your local greenhouse if they would be willing to send in a person to do a presentation for the school. Stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s already have classroom/scouting activities in place, too.

10 – Download and print this plant cell diagram over on Classroom Jr.!

Plant Life Worksheets

How Do Plants Grow Color Sequence

How Do Plants Grow Sequence Coloring Page

How Do Plants Grow Color Sequence Worksheet

How Do Plants Grow Word Search

Plant Life Quizzes on Classroom Jr.

How Do Plants Grow Printable Mini Book – For Young Children

Use this mini book for younger children who are able to color the pictures, cut apart the pages, and assemble them into a book. Staple the pages together, or punch holes and tie string as a book binding.

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 1-2

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 3-4

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 5-6

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 7-8

Blank How Do Plants Grow Printable Mini Book – For Older Kids

Use this mini book for older children who have the skills to construct their own sentences. They can describe what is in the pictures and use the vocabulary words from the word search above.

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 1-2

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 3-4

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 5-6

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 7-8

Check out all of our spring activities, Earth Day activities and other garden crafts while you are here!

Until I come up with a cool tissue paper saving system, I figured I should do something with the scraps right away, because, you know, it’s not really the right week to throw things away like that! So I had already set aside my kids’ raisin boxes and Jello boxes, and I needed a craft to post on Space Jr. because I haven’t done any there yet, so making aliens was the logical solution!

You can totally make these cardboard box aliens without tissue paper scraps and without the mess of decoupage. Just use paint instead.

What You Need to Make this Easy Alien Craft for Kids

• Jello, raisin, or other small empty carboard boxes
• Pipe cleaners for the antennae and legs
• Googly eyes
• Tissue paper scraps
• Wire cutters
• Decoupage glue
• Glitter glue (optional)

How to Make this Easy Alien Craft for Kids

First cover the boxes with the glue and tissue paper. Lay down a thin layer of glue with a paint brush, then lay down the tissue paper, then cover it with another layer of glue. The silver alien used scraps of silver tissue paper, which is very opaque compared to regular tissue paper so I only needed one layer of it. With the purple monster, I had to use about 4 layers of purple tissue paper to ensure you couldn’t see the artwork on the food boxes.

I then added some cut circle scraps from this decoupage project for the eyes, and found some other colored triangles or rectangles to make the mouths. These I glued on just like the rest of the tissue paper.

After the decoupage is dry, use a razor blade to cut four tiny x’s into the bottom of the box, and two tiny x’s in the top as shown. This is where you will insert the antennae and legs.

Cut two pieces of pipe cleaner for the antennae, and three to four for the legs. It was a bit easier to make them stand up on their own with more legs.

To make the spiral antennae, wrap the pipe cleaners around a pencil or paint brush, then pull it off.

Make tiny feet by simply bending the pip cleaners into an oval on the ends.

Then simply stick the ends of the pipe cleaners into the tiny slits you cut with the razor blade.

All that’s left to do is glue on your googly eyes. This is optional too, because you could just as easily decoupage or paint on the eyes. I wanted to use glitter glue to make them, well, more alien-y. I also used two different sized eyes, because I thought it was cuter that way!

If you’re really into aliens & monsters, you’d probably also like these robot alien coloring pages and these fuzzy monster coloring pages, too!

As you can tell, this week I’ve been on a recycled crafts kick for Earth Day. But what’s really happening is that I’m relapsing into my terrible pack rat ways as suddenly I am having a hard time throwing anything out at all! I suppose the earth shall thank me someday for this, but my husband isn’t thanking me. *grin*

And is anyone else appreciating the irony of making a nightlight out of a Crystal Light container? I know, I should have quit while I was ahead.

Recycled Nightlight Craft

What You Need to Make a Recycled Night Light Craft

Recycled Night Light craft Materials

• An empty Crystal Light container
• A night light from your local Dollar Store (the real cheap kind shown below)
• A plastic covered large paper clip
• Mod Podge or other glue for decoupage
• Paper or fabric to decoupage the plastic Crystal Light container
• A paint brush for the glue
• Ribbon trim (about 30″ inches)
• Wire cutters
• Razor blade to cut the container
• A small ruler or other straight edge
• A medium sized nail and a hammer to poke two holes in the plastic
• Glue gun

How to Make This Night Light Recycled Craft

Cut the Crystal Light Container with a Razor Blade

First you need to cut up your Crystal Light (or Wyler’s Light, to be PC about it all) container. In this photo, I was using the tall Wyler’s Light container, or this would also be the same size as the extra large Crystal Light packages (with 6 tubs, not 4).

First I held the ruler straight edge to the side of the container and carefully scored the plastic to slice the container open from top to bottom. I then was able to cut through the container easily (but carefully, because it’s easy to slip on a curved surface). I repeated this step so that I cut out about a one-inch piece from the side of the container. Then I was able to lay the plastic flat on a carboard surface and cut the container into two even pieces, as shown above. If I messed up at all, it was easy to clean up my edges with sturdy kitchen scissors.

Poke Holes in the Plastic with a Nail

Next I poked two small holes into the bottom corners of the plastic with a hammer and nail. I recommend using a larger nail than the one shown above, because I ended up needing to find a screw to twist into the holes to make them a little larger. You need them to be large enough to stick the end of the paper clip through them.

Decoupage with Recycled Tissue Paper

After you have poked the holes into the corners, now is the time to decoupage the plastic however you like. I used tissue paper circles to coordinate with the ribbon in my example at the top. My daughter took the leftover tissue packing paper we get at the dollar store when we buy fragile items, and we used a circle hole puncher to cut out and decoupage her night light.

You probably don’t want to use paper from a book or magazine, unless you are happy with the reverse side showing through. Because when the night light is turned on, it really glows through the paper.

Quick decorating tip - you can also use fabric that coordinates with your child’s room decor!

Now you want to unbend a paperclip and wrap it around the base of the night light. Be sure you’re doing this with plastic wrapped wire and around the groove of the night light at the base (made for sliding the plastic cover onto the light). Higher end night lights aren’t nearly as easy to use, as they don’t have this handy groove to hold your wire.

Twist the paper clip around the base with your fingers or with the wire cutters, and then use the wire cutters to make two “L” shaped bends in the paper clip as shown in the second photo. Slip the ends of the paper clip through your holes.

Lastly, you will need to lay a line of glue from your hot glue gun underneath the wires and glue the ends of the paper clip to the back side of the decoupaged container. If you don’t do this, the cover will flop all over the place.

Now you want to cover the edges of your plastic cover with ribbon to hide the wire and make the edges look polished. Start at the back and cover the back two ends with ribbon first, and add enough glue from the hot glue gun around the paper clip to cover it up too.

To put ribbon across the top and bottm, fold over the edge just a bit and glue it in place to give the corners a clean look (like in the inset in the second image above). Then simply glue the ribbon onto the top and bottom edges with the glue gun.

And viola! You  are done! Start to finish the craft takes about 30-45 minutes, not including drying time for the decoupage.

Be sure to check out the rest of our recycled crafts and all of our Earth Day activities and printables!

So, for all the missing mismatched socks we have in this house, I should have a sock puppet museum by now. Seriously. So to keep with our recycled crafts theme of the week for Earth Day, here’s a pretty darn cute animal sock puppet idea.

What You Need to Make this Giraffe Animal Sock Puppet

• An old sock – preferably tan and long-ish, like an adult size dress sock
• One brown pipe cleaner
• Two brown pom poms
• Two googly eyes
• Brown and black paint
• Paint brush
• Glue gun
• Wire clippers

Do all your prep work before you start painting, because you’ll be assembling most of this puppet while it is on your hand, which will make it a little tricky to do other things.

Step One: Cut the pipe cleaner into 4 pieces. 2 pieces are 1″ inch long, 2 pieces are 2″ inches long.

Bend the longer pieces in half to form the ears.

With the glue gun, glue one end of the shorter pieces into the center of the pom poms. These are the giraffe horns.

Step Two: Get your paint and brush ready, and make sure it is slightly watery like tempera or acrylic paint in the containers in the photo above. If you’re using thicker paints, it will be much harder to get it to sink into the sock fibers.

Step Three: Put the sock onto your hand, with your fingers going into the toe of the sock, and your thumb going into the heel like this:

Step Four: Paint spots on the sock. They should be random, mishapen spots like on a real giraffe. For a ‘realistic effect’ (ha!), you can make the spots smaller as they get closer to the head. Then paint two black spots on the nose as shown in the first photo for the nose holes.

Step Five: Use the hot glue gun to glue the googly eyes, pipe cleaner ears, and pom pom horns onto the head. This sounds like it might be tricky, but it isn’t. Just put a drop of the glue the size of a small pea where you want the parts, and stick them on. I glued the ears into the fold of the sock that you can see in the photo above, directly to the left of the paint brush at the back of the puppet mouth.

Step Six: Play with your sock puppet!

Animal Sock Puppet: Giraffe

For you animal lovers, be sure to check out Animal Jr., with tons of animal printables, animal coloring pages, and even a few giraffes hanging around.

As I ate lunch from the freezer last week, I was left with a little black plastic tray that I would normally toss in the trash. But I had a feeling I could turn it into something cool, so I washed it out and held onto it until inspiration hit me – and it did when I saw my grandmother’s pillbox hat:

Since it’s Earth Day this week, this is the first in a series of recycled crafts. Woot!

Check out all Woo! Jr. Network Earth Day crafts, printables and coloring pages here.

What You Need to Make this Pillbox Hat Recycled Craft

Here’s my rather simple materials list  (not everything is pictured above)

• A black single serving microwave dinner tray (washed!)
• Green ribbon (I bought this green ribbon from the scrap heap at my local craft store for less than $1). I prefer wired ribbon for this project so that the bow (pictured below) holds its shape.
• A 14″ inch square of black tulle (you could get uber-recyclely geeky and use the netting from a produce bag instead, but I didn’t have any in black)
• A thin and stretchy elastic hair headband (for the full head, not a pony tail holder)
• A safety pin
• Tissue paper and pipe cleaners to make your tissue paper flowers
• Wire cutters
• Glue gun

How to Make this Pillbox Hat Recycled Craft

First you need to make your flowers (tissue paper flowers instructions here). I made mostly small flowers with some larger flowers as accent pieces. As pictured in the materials section, I made:

• 8 mini pink flowers from 1 inch squares of tissue paper
• 7 small yellow flowers from 1 1/2 inch squares of tissue paper
• 3 small accent flowers from darker colored multi-colored tissue paper (and the brown pipe cleaner centers on these made them look really striking!)
• 2 medium multi-colored flowers using yellow and white tissue paper, varying from 1 inch to three inches
• 1 large ‘centerpiece’ flower using 4 inch pieces of tissue paper. I spent a bit more time and creativity on this flower, using extra ribbon as additional leaves and cutting more intricate petals out of the tissue paper

Your microwave dinner tray may vary in size from mine, so you may need more or less flowers than this.

Also, make your accent bow with about 15 inches of ribbon and one of the small accent flowers. Simply tie the bow like you would tie your shoes, make it symmetrical and pretty, and then snip off the ends with a diagonal cut. Then I just used the pipe cleaner end of the flower to wrap it around the center of the bow and secure it into place.

Make the Hat Veil 2

Make the Hat Veil 3

Tissue Paper Flower Arrangement

To make the veil, grab the left corner of the square of tulle and bring it up to the top corner. Do the same with the right corner, and then you’ll have two ‘flaps’ (seen on the far left of the first photo) sticking out. Bring those two flaps in to the top corner so that all the visible corners of the tulle square are together (see picture two). Safety pin the corners together. Now, cut off the last corner in a rounded fashion like in the last photo.

At this point I highly recommend doing a ‘trial run’ and arranging your flowers on top of the hat to determine where you want them before you glue them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done some craft ‘on the fly’ and then wished I hadn’t glued everything in place.

Once you know where you want your flowers, you can rev up your glue gun and start gluing! Glue down a layer of ribbon to act as a base for the flowers. It looks prettier and helps to add interest while covering up the top of the plastic tray.

Add your flowers to the outside rim first, then add the second inner circle of flowers next. Try to strategically cover up the pipe cleaner stems as you glue down the second circle.

Leave the center open so that we can add the veil and the centerpiece flower.

In the center spot, glue the veil in place. Make sure that it covers the part that you want to be the front of the hat. Now glue your large centerpiece flower on top of the veil to cover up the rest of the open space and top of the veil.

At this point you can attach the accent bow to the back of the hat (seen peeking out above). And lastly, put a big glob of glue on the center of the inside tray and attach elastic headband. It’s done! My daughter went *crazy* over it! Especially because she isn’t allowed to touch my grandmother’s hat, much to her dismay. Now she has one of her own.

Now that’s both creative crafting and smart parenting, eh??

If you liked this craft, you might also like this tissue paper flower topiary, too!