Creation conscious crafts

One of the most difficult things to be rigorously environmentally sensitive about often seems to be craft work with the children - it is so tempting to potter round Hobbycraft and return with lots of plastic packaged, foam-based stuff. I've been trying to resist the sparkly jewels, stickers etc that I used to add to the Godly Play craft boxes, sticking to the dolly pegs, and lolly sticks and trying to encourage more use of junk modelling, but conscious that all these become difficult to recycle or compost afterwards. Over the summer I was tasked with coming up with more structured crafts to go with stories from Nick Butterworth's retellings of the parables. The results are by no means perfectly sustainable, but hopefully heading in the right, reduced-plastic, direction:

The Lost Coin - coins made out of yellow icing; coins of cardboard and foil

The Two Sons - 'Mr Potato Head' style apples (using bits of coloured icing I had left over from a birthday cake as if they were plasticine); decorated paper baskets for carrying - either origami boxes or the easier option of a sealed envelope with the two top corners cut away into a basket shape

The House on the Rock - stone painting, sand pictures, plastic bottle rain gauges

The Lost Sheep - sheep fridge magnets (magnetic tape a bit of a fail here, as was resorting to buying cottonwool from the chemist instead of a more sustainable brand); found sheep party crowns - more cottonwool as the sheep with which the crowns are decorated.

The Good Stranger - my predecessor as administrator bought huge stocks of coloured paper and extra large paper so no purchasing needed for 1) neighbour chains - paper chains with names of everyone who might count as our neighbour and 2) road pictures - large pictures of Bible road stories that can be joined up together as one giant road.