Looking to make cute crafts with kitchen items with your preschooler? Try these fun coffee filter oysters (complete with “pearls”).
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.
(For more summer fun, check out this seashell identification worksheet – kids love gathering shells at the beach and learning more about who lives in them.)
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:
Step 4:
Add googly eyes
Step 5:
Decorate your oyster’s shell
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.
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
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.
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.
Click here for paper plate crafts for preschoolers
The environmental fair definitely inspired me to make more crafts with kitchen items. Craft supplies don’t need to be fancy to be fun!
