Tiny Hands, Big Ideas: Easy Summer Crafts Using Recycled Treasures
If you’re a parent, chances are your kid has tried to bring home a rock, a stick, or a squished cardboard box at least once this week. Maybe more. The good news? With a little imagination (and very little effort), those everyday objects can turn into hours of creative fun.
We’ve rounded up some of our favorite easy, kid-approved summer crafts using items you already have at home—egg cartons, coffee filters, toilet paper rolls, cardboard scraps, and yes… rocks. ✨
These projects are screen-free, budget-friendly, and perfect for messy little makers who love to create.
Whether you're filling a slow summer afternoon or trying to salvage a rainy day, these activities are low-lift for you—and magic for them. Let’s get crafting!
- Painted Rock Fish- Got a rock-obsessed kid? Let them turn their treasures into a whole school of fish with some paint and a little imagination. Add fins with paper or felt for extra flair.
- Paper Roll Caterpillars- Dip the end of a toilet paper roll in paint and stamp out a row of circles to create your caterpillar’s body. Then decorate with eyes, legs, and antennae—so simple, and so fun for little hands!
- Egg Carton Sharks- It's Shark Week (errr month?)! Transform a recycled egg carton into a fierce (but friendly!) shark. Add fins, paint/markers, and teeth for an ocean themed craft that's equal parts silly and creative.
- Coffee Filter Butterflies- All you need is coffee filters, markers and clothespins or pipe cleaners to create these colorful little flutter friends. A quick spritz of water turned marker scribbles into magical wings!
- Paper Roll Binoculars- Two empty TP rolls + string + crayons, stickers or construction paper = ready for backyard safari missions!
- Cardboard Box Town- Use old delivery boxes to create and build tiny houses, roads or even a train station. Crayons, tape, and boxes are all you need to get started! Of course adults can help with any scissor needs!
- Nature Collage Boards- Use sticks, leaves, flower petals, and grass clippings to create collages on recycled cardboard. Bonus: great excuse to get outside and explore. This could be really cute to do each season to show the changes in nature!
- Garden Shadow Tracing- I've seen this use before with dinosaurs and monsters, but I found a creator on IG the other day that was tracing shadows of flowers in her garden to create a picture and then using actual flowers and plants to rub on the picture as 'paint'. You can find her post here. I am so excited to try this one with my daughters!