Looking to make cute crafts with kitchen items with your preschooler? Try these fun coffee filter oysters (complete with “pearls”).

crafts with kitchen items -coffee filter oyster craft with googly eyes and pom pom pearl

Our town hosted an environmental fair this weekend, complete with all kinds of fun activities for kids. My little one loved the “Oysters are nature’s filter” table, which taught that oysters will clean the body of water they are living in.  

Did you know: One adult oyster can clean up to 50 gallons of water per day.

Oysters filter plankton, nutrients, chemicals, and other pollutants from the water.

American Littoral Society

There was a big container of water from the river, along with a bunch of live oysters, which you could watch become cleaner and cleaner during the afternoon.

Along with real oyster shells for the kids to decorate (more on that later), you could make these cute little coffee filter oysters. They were a big hit with the preschool crowd.

Preschool crafts with kitchen items: coffee filter oysters

What you’ll need to make your oysters:

  • round coffee filters
  • googly eyes
  • small pom poms
  • clear scotch tape
  • markers / crayons / stickers / anything else you would like to decorate your oyster friend

Step 1:

Flatten out your coffee filter to make a round circle

Step 2:

Fold your circle in half and then in half again.

Step 3:

Use a small piece of scotch tape to tape the open side shut like this:

coffee filter folded into quarters

Step 4:

Add googly eyes

coffee filter oyster craft with googly eyes

Step 5:

Decorate your oyster’s shell

crafts with kitchen items -decorating a coffee filter oyster craft with markers

Step 6:

Using a small piece of tape, make a loop so the sticky part is on the outside. Flatten the loop and stick one of the pompoms to the tape.

coffee filter oyster craft with pom pom pearl

Step 7:

Open up the curved part of your oyster slightly and then stick the pompom to the inside to make the pearl.

Step 8:

Say hi to your new oyster friends

coffee filter oyster craft with googly eyes and pom pom pearl

Along with the paper oysters, there was a big bucket of real oyster shells for the kids to decorate and keep. My preschooler couldn’t get enough of them. He loved the texture and could have sat and colored them all day.

oyster shells decorated by preschooler
oyster shells decorated by preschooler

Looking for a storybook to go along with this craft? Try Olly the Oyster Cleans the Bay, about a determined little oyster who wants to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

The environmental fair definitely inspired me to make more crafts with kitchen items. Craft supplies don’t need to be fancy to be fun!

Kym

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