April is Earth Month! To celebrate, we have a new printable 3D Earth craft for kids. The completed project makes great decorative wall art.
This is also a fun activity to support kids learning about space or our planet any time of year.
Earth looks so pretty from a distance, doesn’t it? Now kids can create it from paper with a 3D effect.
When designing this craft, I wanted to include more options of the Earth viewed from different angles like I did with our spinning paper Earth craft, however the shapes were too complicated and fiddly for kids to cut out. So, for practical purposes, this craft features a simplified outline of North and South America.
To construct a 3D effect, we’ve used paper support strips similar to the ones in our 3D pattern cat craft. With this project, the globe is layered with clouds, so the craft is more complex to assemble.
The age recommendation is 9 and up. If you have younger kids, they may like our I Can Help the Earth popup book.
There are two versions included in the template. One is designed to be printed directly to coloured card stock, the other is colour-your own (pictured below).
With the colour-your-own version, some art materials (eg crayon or pastels) could make the surface too waxy for a glue stick to adhere to. If that is the case, you may need to use regular school glue applied with a Q-tip or double-sided tape instead.
I’ve used watercolour pencils to colour the example and my UHU glue stick (affiliate link) worked fine with that.
How to make a 3D Earth Craft
You will need
- The template, available in our printables store as well as our TPT store
- Black card stock for the backing sheet
- Watercolour pencils or an alternative art material if colouring your own
- Scissors
- Glue stick
- A cutting mat, metal ruler and scoring tool (affiliate link) are recommended for folding the paper strips
- White acrylic paint
- Fine-tipped paintbrush
- Cotton ball or small piece of sponge
How to
Print the template out as per the instructions. The version designed for coloured paper has three continents to a page. This is to conserve paper when working with large groups. If you’re only making one Earth craft discard the two extra continents.
If using the colour-your-own version, colour the ocean and continent shapes. I’ve used watercolour pencils.
Cut all the shapes out. With the paper strips, cut the outer rectangles out first.
Recommended: Score and fold the dotted lines on the 3D support strips before cutting into strips. Alternatively, fold each strip individually after cutting them out.
Fold and glue into squares.
Glue six supports onto the reverse side of your continent—three on the top half, three on the bottom. Glue onto the globe, positioned roughly as per the example image.
Cut cloud supports A and B out and glue into squares. You probably won’t need to use all of them, but there are extras just in case.
Place the clouds roughly where you’d like them, then glue the supports on the back that work. Where a cloud overlaps continent, use a small square. Where it is above water, use a large square. You can also glue the cloud flat to the water. If it overlaps the edge of the circle, trim to fit.
Cut the planet support strips out. Fold and glue into squares. Glue all six to the back of the Earth and glue onto a black card stock background.
Use a fine-tipped brush to dot stars around the background. Use a cotton ball or a piece of sponge to dab icecaps onto the polar regions.
Optionally, you can also dab a darker shade of green onto the continent.
Happy Earth Month to all our readers!
You might also like
- See all of our Earth Day crafts for kids here.
- Make a spinning paper Earth
- Here are 30+ Earth Day ideas for kids
