You don’t have to spend a lot of green on cool eco-friendly summer toys. You, along with your kids can make a whole slew of eco-friendly toys all on your own, with low-cost eco-friendly or recycled materials. Following are 20 eco-fun, summer toy projects.
- Really neat rock dominoes (shown above) – one of those I can’t believe I didn’t think of that ideas.
- Make a recycled Cardboard Playhouse like the one shown above from Make Baby Stuff, then break out the non-toxic art supplies and let your little one decorate to her heart’s content.
- If you’ve got some tools and are good with wood you can make a working wooden boom crane that little kids will love.
- Kool-Aid dyed play silks – kids love play silks. You can toss them up, use them as doll clothing, use them for dress up fun, or fly around the yard with them swooshing behind you. You can find inexpensive silks at thrift stores OR silk material which takes a little more work because you’ll have to cut the material and mend them, but no big. If you don’t want to use Kool-aid try dying the silks with some homemade juice dye (made from plants).
- Organic finger paint – not freakishly bright, but non-toxic subtle paints you can make with the kids.
- Flying fun with a super slick recycled cardboard origami hang glider.
- Build a Bubble-Powered Rocket – with recycled paper, TUMS and film canisters. This rocket actually lifts off.
- Nine amazing DIY play kitchens and one totally hip homemade oven!
- Seriously amazing homemade baby blocks (shown above)! Use scrap wood or sustainable wood and non-toxic paint
- Start saving toilet paper tubes now and by mid summer you’ll have enough to build a toilet paper tube playhouse. Use non-toxic glue and duct tape to create your playhouse.
- Excellent collection of old-fashioned, handmade toys from Mother Earth News.
- The Perfect Dollhouse: A homemade miniature villa from Family Fun. It’s a tiny, completely custom, recycled dollhouse box. Tidy enough to slide right under the bed. So creative that it’ll be a hit all summer. The sky is really the limit with this project. You probably have tons of recycled bits around the house that will work for this cool project.
- Toy boats made with recycled blocks.
- Make a butterfly house.
- Future directors will adore making a homemade movie wheel – be sure to use recycled paper.
- 100% awesome recycled cereal box houses.
- For baby fun and learning make a beautiful soft book of colors with fabric scraps.
- Got summer pixies? Make some creative homemade fairy wings that your little one can decorate and fly with all summer long.
- Homemade puppet theater – then add some sock puppets.
- After hours and hours of Zelda, I’m pretty sure my son Cedar would faint dead away if I made him this sweet grappling hook – not for irresponsible kids though.
[images via Martha Stewart]
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Thank you so much for this list! What fantastic ideas you have! For a new mother of a baby who isn’t yet a year, it’s great to find a list like this for our future. Keep up the great work!
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