Eco-Friendly Easter Crafts for Kids

While not quite on the same level as Christmas, Easter can be another time of the year where we create a lot of waste. When you’re trying to find activities to fill the time on the extra-long weekend and over the school holidays, it can be easy to fall back on old habits plastic packaging and expensive craft supplies. Instead, why not make it a challenge to commit to eco-friendly decorations, gifts and activities this Easter.

There are plenty of everyday items around the house that are perfect for crafting. Nearly anything that goes in the recycling bin can be turned into a bunny or an Easter egg collection vessel and either reused next year, recycled or composted once it’s all over.

So, set aside your empty toilet rolls, egg cartons, glass jars, cereal boxes, ice cream containers, old greeting cards and scrap paper. Just make sure your kids have their favourite crayons or texters, scissors and a glue stick ready to go. If you have to buy new, go for eco-friendly items that you can reuse year after year.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Fun with food

Kids love painting and playing with colours. They also love playing with their food. Thankfully, this can be a cheap and easy activity that’s also beneficial for their growing minds. Potatoes and other root vegetables make great DIY stamps when cut carefully in half or into shapes by a responsible adult. Try these Easter egg or bunny stamp ideas with a non-toxic, water soluble paint, and stamp onto recycled cardboard for Easter cards for friends and family. Afterwards, rinse the stamp with water or a little bit of vegetable oil to remove the paint and compost.

If you’re feeling really daring, trying making these vegetable-based watercolours or colour and decorate chicken eggs using natural food-based dyes.

Recycle those cardboard tubes

If there’s one thing every household should have an abundance of, it’s cardboard tubes thanks to empty toilet and paper towel rolls. Wrapped in scrap paper (or painted if you have the supplies) with cut out ears and feet stuck on with tape or glue, toilet rolls make cute little bunnies or chicks, for decorations and games. Kids can draw on the faces, or see what they can use as eyes, noses or whiskers from the left-over bits and pieces. Close off the bottom with paper for a mini egg holder.

A plastic-free bonnet for the hat parade

One of the strangest holiday traditions is the Easter hat parade. Many of us will have memories of walking around the school oval trying to balance a basket covered in plastic chickens and eggs on our heads.

There are plenty of ways to make an Easter bonnet without the waste, making the most of recycled cardboard, sheets of newspaper, scrap material from clothes that the kids have outgrown or an empty ice cream container and some papier mache. You can also give new life to an old hat or basket. Have the kids decorate their own bonnet with shredded recycled paper and hand drawn chicks, bunnies and eggs.

No matter what you create, attach a ribbon or strip of fabric to secure the bonnet under the chin, which can then act as a handle when you flip the hat upside down for an easy basket for the Easter morning egg hunt.