With Earth Hour this weekend and Earth Day coming up I thought it would be fun to do a little Earth themed craft with my daughter and these Earth suncatchers are what we came up with!
At three years old we haven’t been massively studying the solar system but she listens along quite happily when I read about it with her brother and has spotted planets from our back garden before, besides it’s never too early to start teaching kids about our planet and how important looking after it is!
These sweet planet Earth suncatchers remind me of stained glass and they are really easy to make. As an added bonus they’re also perfect for encouraging fine motor skills too.
RELATED – Free Printable Earth Template
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What You'll Find on This Page
Earth Suncatcher Materials
Contact paper / sticky back plastic
Earth Day Suncatchers
To make our planet earth suncatchers I started by drawing around the outside and inside of a roll of sellotape on some black card to give us two even circles which we then cut out.
We then cut the coloured cellophane into small pieces, putting the green cellophane on one plate and the blue on another so that my daughter could pick which colour she fancied.
Sticky back plastic is notorious for, well, sticking to everything so to keep it in place we removed the backing and then used some washi tape to attach it to the table.
Once this was done my daughter put her black card circles onto here sticky back plastic, ready to decorate. A couple of her circles overlapped but as we had made them quite big this meant that when it was time to cut them out we could just trim a little bit off the edges and still get a circle.
As an aside, I know it looks in the pictures like we live in a squat, we don’t I promise, but we’re still in the middle of house renovations and every room looks crazy right now. Crafting has given us a bit of quiet time in what doesn’t feel that calm generally. House photos will be more Pinterest friendly soon with any luck!
I joined in making an Earth suncatcher too because, well, I like to join in! I’m not sure that mine looks any more like our planet than my three year old’s does but it was fun to give it a go.
Using the small bits of cellophane makes this a good craft to help with fine motor skills and it was really interesting to see my daughter precisely placing each piece exactly where she wanted it as opposed to when we used a similar technique to make stained glass lanterns a year ago and she would throw all the cellophane straight onto it.
To finish your earth suncatchers just place another layer of sticky back plastic on top to seal it all in once you are done and them cut them out.
You can then hang them up using a bit of sellotape or by making a loop to hang them with a bit of cotton.
Like this craft? Make sure that you pin the image below so you don’t forget about it!
More Earth Day Crafts and Activities
This bubble wrap printed Earth craft makes for a fun painting activity
Or this Earth Day collage looks super pretty and is great for fine motor skills too!
Finally for tons more inspiration check out this round up of Earth Day activities for toddlers
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