earth | Grey Skies & Rainbow Highs

Small hands make a big different, especially when it comes to protecting our Earth.

This DIY Earth Day Handprint Artwork is perfect way to showcase your love for Earth while using recycled crafts supplies.

At a young age, I’ve taught Mila she needs to love our Earth. We’ve always talked about recycling and how we need to be mindful of our decisions. She always picks up trash off the ground and loves every part of the outside world.

It’s important to me that she knows her impact and ‘small’ hands can help our Earth heal.

This DIY Earth Day Handprint Artwork was a perfect way to showcase that. We reused supplies we already had and made it cute to show off. Hopefully signs like these will help inspire others to love Earth as deeply as we do.

Here’s all we used:

Wood sign
Paint
Paint brush
Yarn
Hot glue

To start off, I reused the back of an old summer sign. It was the perfect size and shape of what I had in mind. Plus, it gave it another purpose too!

Next, paint your child’s hands resembling the Earth. This was a bit tricky. I just added blue paint first then topped it off with green. Obviously it’s not going to look exactly right, but I think ours turned out pretty cute.

Then, press down on your child’s hand to get the paint to transfer to the wood sign. You have to work quick so it doesn’t completely dry on their hands.

Once the paint is dry, you can add whatever quote around the hand Earth. I was inspired by The Letter Vee’s Earth Day worksheet and used, “Small Hands Make A Big Difference.” You can write whatever speaks to you!

At this point, I could’ve been done, but I had to add a little extra.

I used scrap yarn as bows on the hanger. The color really popped and gave that earthy feel. Once I saw that, I knew this piece needed more texture than just the bows.

So, I added the fluffy white yarn around the outside of the sign. It really made it look special and stick out.

Since I wanted to spread our love for the earth, this sign is hanging on our porch. Hopefully it’ll inspire someone to make good choices. The future of our world and children are in our hands.

We can make a difference.

What ways do you celebrate our Earth? Check out these fun ways we have:

Yesterday, I planned on writing a recommendation post while Mila napped. Turned out, I must have needed one too. Her usual quick nap turned into her and I snoozing for three hours. I’m definitely not complaining about the extra sleep, but it pushed back some of my plans. Oh well.

Since Mila took her nap a little later and longer, she wanted to stay up. I figured instead of just watching a movie, we could do an Earth week inspired activity. There’s a few that I’ve saved on Pinterest, but during the lockdown, I found a subscription box that caught my attention.

The Kids Art Box is an activity box for kids of all ages. It can be modified for younger and older kids, which is perfect for siblings. March’s box, the one I have, came with four activities and a seed bomb visual recipe. The really cool thing about this box is everything you need comes in it, besides the visual recipe ingredients. This is a game changer. I have a lot of craft supplies at my house, but usually when I was to do a specific one, I have to go to the store. The Kids Art Box takes care of the trip to the store or tearing your house apart. It’s also all color coded. So, the instruction card comes with a colored dot and you can find all the supplies you need for that specific card with the same colored dot.

The mom who makes these, Melanie, does an amazing job of organizing the boxes, making sure everything’s in there, and explaining what needs to be done. Unfortunately, I didn’t snag a picture of everything wrapped up. Mila thinks everything need unwrapped immediately (thanks birthday week!). All activities are clever, creative, and conducive to learning. It’s definitely worth the price as well. The best option is $33 a month and you get everything you need. I think between having all the supplies and not having to search a while for activities, it’s so worth it. If you want to check out the boxes and want $10 off, press here.

Back to our story…

I grabbed the box and Mila had tore everything open. It wasn’t hard to figure out what went where, but she thought her way was better. When looking through everything, she kept noticing the picture of the Earth and she does this weird thing where when she sees it she tries to eat it. It’s from watching a movie, Pets 2. The next time we watch it, I’ll try to record and share; makes me laugh every time. Anyways, the activity I chose for her to do was the mixed media Earth collage.

It came with: cardboard cut in a circle, blue and green paint, a packet of buttons, a packet of gems, a glue stick, string, washi tape, glitter glue, and a paint brush. A laminated picture of the world, along with directions, supply list, and information about the craft accompanied it as well.

Mila is obsessed with the buttons and gems! She kept saying ‘cute!’ I told her we were using green and blue because that’s the color of our earth. After the eating noises stopped, she pointed to the different colors and I told her she needed to paint the earth on her circle. She did typical painting routine and I think she nailed it. I asked her why it wasn’t all blue and green and she pointed to the clouds. At least I know she was referencing the picture.

By then, it was getting late and Mila started yawning. We cleaned everything up and let her earth dry over night.

When we woke up and after we watched Frozen of course, Mila insisted on seeing her earth. The paint dried up nicely and we started right on adding other media.

She’s never really experimented with glitter glue or a glue stick, but caught on after I showed her. She loved squeezing everything out and was insistent on glueing the buttons and gems down. When it got too sticky for her, she let me help her. We played around with the different media for about thirty minutes until I thought she couldn’t add anything else.

I really loved this activity and Mila did too. We talked about why we were adding blue and green and what they represented. She kept pointing to the the blue and saying beach or pool. I can definitely see us doing something similar in the upcoming years. She enjoyed it and I think it’d be interesting to see how she progressing in her understanding too.

Our little earth doesn’t have a home yet, the glitter glue is still drying… she ended up using the whole tube. She’s all girl and loves her glitter. I’m thinking of putting all our Earth Week crafts where I usually have garland. When Mila sees her art hanging, she always points to it and shows it off when people visit. It’ll be adorable to see all of her different interpretations.

I’m seriously so happy with this art box. When we do the next activity, I’ll make sure to show everything packaged together and lined up. I really want to do a “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” activity, just trying to find something for her age. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know!