Monday, April 9, 2012

8 Ways to Upcycle/Use Styrofoam Egg carton



Tinkerlab hosts a Creative Challenge every two months with the introduction of a new material and an invitation for children to create something from it. It's the ninth creative challenge and the material is an egg carton.

When I saw the challenge, I was excited because egg cartons are our favorite recycle/upcycle item. We did make a flower garden with an egg carton but with CJ being sick the whole last week it has been very difficult to post it. After seeing all the wonderful entries, I'm just unable to stop myself and I have made a roundup of all the egg carton crafts/play we did in the past.
  1. Adorable Caterpillar - Though I don't have a step by step procedure for this craft, its very easy to do and self explanatory
  2. Create an Egg carton tree and Play a Straw berry picking game - When CJ was 2 years old, We made the egg carton tree craft and its is one of her favorite.


    After making the tree, we played pretend straw berry picking game.
  3. Stamp an hungry caterpillar with the cut egg cartons
  4. Stamping with Egg carton top- Cut the Egg carton into a Butterfly shape and use it for stamping. This one is our favorite too. We made the Life Cycle of butterfly art to go along with the book - The very Hungry Caterpillar.
  5. The very Busy Spider - we created an adorable Busy spider using egg carton
  6. Sail a Boat- Use the egg carton flat end to sail a Boat

  7. Ice play - Create Ice cups using Egg carton Last summer we played/made ice sculptures with different materials Easter eggs, bath toys, egg shells... We used egg cartons to freeze the Easter eggs and some water had slipped to the egg cartons. After freezing, we got a egg carton layer surrounding the egg which let to egg carton ice cups. This was an accidental find and an unexpected result. Do try this! Cj loved pouring food color into the cups!
  8. Flapping Egg carton Butterflies
    After making the basic butterfly shape,few of them we painted
    Decorated few with construction, gift wrap papers