6 Crafts with Recycled Plates

5 minutes

Chickens, jellyfish, clocks, masks, and handmade games. If you want to know how to make all these crafts with recycled plates, we'll tell you how.

Reviewed and approved by the pediatrician Marcela Alejandra Caffulli.

Written by Maria del Mar Garcia Martin

Last update: 27 December, 2022

If you’re passionate about activities made with your own hands and you also want to teach your children the value of recycling, this is the place for you. In the following article, we’ll show you some of the most original crafts with recycled plates.

All these options are perfect for multiple purposes: Decorating the house, encouraging the manual development of the little ones, teaching notions of ecology, and spending quality time with the family. Are you up for it? Then, let’s get to work!

Benefits of crafts that protect the environment

Crafts can be a perfect entertainment to kill boredom, but they’re not limited to that. The truth is that they offer many benefits to children, such as encouraging the development of creativity and imagination.

But if we also talk about the proposals that teach children to respect the environment, things get even better.

Through crafts, children discover the properties of objects and different materials. In addition, by giving them a new use to make functional objects for them (such as toys), they acquire notions of recycling, encourage ingenuity, and develop abstract thinking.

Crafts with recycled plates for children

If you want your children to develop all the skills described above, take note of the following proposals.

Plastic cups, plates, forks, and knives. — If you’ve used plastic dishes for a special event, don’t throw them away! Take advantage of them to give your children a new material to make very original crafts.

1. Chickens

It seems that some beautiful chickens have snuck into your home! Give them life with those used plastic plates!

Materials

Cardboard plates
Red and yellow felt fabric
Googly eyes
Glue

Step by step instructions

To create your own chicken coop, just fold a plate in half, so that it will be the body of the chickens.
Then, cut out a crest with the red felt and make a beak with the yellow felt.
Attach the googly eyes with glue and they’re ready!

Homemade jellyfish from the sea

Is there anything more reminiscent of summer at the beach than jellyfish? If you agree with us, we invite you to create some beautiful ones with recycled plates and a few pieces of fabric.

They’re very simple. Just turn the plates upside down and glue the fabrics together with glue. Then, stick on some movable eyes and hang them with strings on the walls of the children’s rooms to decorate them. They’ll look fabulous!

3. A clock to learn how to tell time

Are your kids learning the time? Well, this clock will be a perfect option to review this skill with them.

- First, draw a cross that divides the following times: O’clock, quarter past, half past, and quarter to.
- When you have it ready, place two strips of cardboard (one longer and one shorter) in the middle with a paper clip, which will be the hands.
- Glue post-its in the order of the respective hours and you’re ready to start the class.

4. Fun masks

Who’s behind that mask? Next, we suggest you make very funny masks, which are ideal for Mardi Gras, Halloween, or any costume party.

You only need cardboard plates and straws to attach them to the face once finished.
For decoration, we recommend taking inspiration from your child’s favorite superhero or animal. Fold a plate in half and that will be the canvas for their imagination to run wild.

5. Darts, one of the most fun crafts with recycled plates

There’s nothing like creating a game to have fun outdoors with family or friends. Besides, if it’s made with recycled materials, it’ll look even better.

Rescue an empty paper towel tube and as many plates as you want to have discs.
After cutting out the center of the plates, paint them with tempera and challenge the rest to see who has the best aim!

Paper plates and cups. — Cardboard plates and cups can also be reused to give life to your kids’ creations. In addition, they’ll serve to instill in them the 3R rule: Reduce, reuse, and recycle.

6. Letter roulette

Get ready to make these crafts with cardboard plates and spend entertaining afternoons learning new words or different foreign languages. Make this craft with your children from the time they’re very young. Since, as corroborated by a study carried out at the University of Salamanca, there’s a critical period in which parents should facilitate the learning of a second language in children.

Materials

Paper plate
Labels with the letters of the alphabet
Scissors
Glue
An old spinner
Cardboard or a triangle-shaped sticker

Step by step instructions

Glue a piece of cardboard and a triangle-shaped sticker on the spinner.
Then make a small hole in the center of the plate to place the spinner.
Place the letters of the alphabet around the plate.
The game begins!

Each player will have a turn to spin the roulette wheel. When they stop on a letter, they’ll have one minute to say as many words beginning with that letter as they can.

Take care of Mother Nature with these 6 crafts with recycled plates

We hope you have been fascinated by these ideal crafts to have fun and learn to respect the environment. Undoubtedly, they’re perfect options to instill values and enjoy spending time with the little ones at home. In addition, they’re very versatile and can be put into practice at any time of the day and year.