Nature Play Collection Egg Carton – Free Printable

Do you have a child that likes to collect? I do.

Oskar keeps collections of all sorts of bits and pieces, some that he is given or finds. For a while he took a little basket everywhere with him full of cars, then it was dinosaurs then it was cars and dinosaurs, a pom pom, a seed pod, a seashell, a pencil – you name it – he was collecting it and carrying it all in his little basket.

What eventually happens is that the basket would get emptied, usually on our kitchen table and a new collection would begin in a fresh basket but we would be left with a pipe cleaner that according to my toddler was more precious than GOLD!

So I decided to introduce the egg carton collection system which will help to curb the collecting mess, especially during a Nature Play month as we are always looking for treasures in the garden.

Each section of the carton is assigned a day and there are extra spots for the weekend, at the end of the week it gets moved to the toy box to become a permanent member of the play family he has created OR it goes in the bin and I have to tell you so far so good. We’ve ru-used and then binned a chunk of charcoal, accepted a dragon into the play family, used a pinecone to start our fire, kept some seed pods for future crafts and returned a few toys to their natural habits.

I’ve made our nature play collection egg carton as a free printable PDF so you can download and print it out A4 and with a little trimming, it will fit a standard dozen egg carton.

You will need;

• A printer to print it out and some A4 paper (I used a lovely recycled paper for ecocern that matched the egg carton)

• Glue or sticky tape

• Scissors

If you don’t glue the inside paper to the bottom of the carton you can swap it out and use the carton for activities. I have included a counting and colour match printable as well.

Click here to get your free printable egg carton collection PDF.

I would love to see if you do use this on an egg carton for your child, you can tag @wild_mountain_child or Instagram of Facebook.

Do you have a collector, how do you keep up with all their treasure?