For my eldest daughter's Earth Day project, we came up with a fun way to upcycle water bottles into maracas - with washi tape (and a little decorative duct tape, too!).

My first grader was super excited to come up with a project that uses recycleables. Her teacher invited the parents to help with the project, but I wanted the inspiration to come from her. She really wanted to use empty water bottles.


After brainstorming, we came up with a plan.

Here's what you need for this project:
2 water bottles (empty and dry) with caps
decorative tape
scissors
rice
funnel
cereal box
hot glue and hot glue gun

First, we needed something to decorate our maracas. Washi tape is easy to use--even for little hands.


If you are confident in your child's dexterity in using scissors, then they can do this part by themselves!

My first grader selected the tape and the pattern and made stripes with very little help from mom!


Once we covered the water bottles completely, we used a funnel to pour about a half cup of dry rice into each water bottle and then capped the bottle.


Using hot glue, a grownup should seal the top. Cut 2 one inch by six strips out of the cereal box.


Fold in half and wrap the two ends around the bottle cap and hot glue them onto the bottle cap, making a handle. Wrap the cardboard with more decorative tape and get ready to shake things up!!


We had a lot of fun crafting this together! I was really proud of how hard my little girl worked on her project. She did everything except hot gluing the handle (because I didn't want her to burn herself). Even better, my younger two were jealous that my first grader had to take those maracas to school! I see these maracas being in a lot of demand once they come back home from school!