summer crafts

You’ll love these edible beach crafts for teens for fun summer learning. Also, look at my page Seashore Watching Unit Study and Beach Lapbook for more fun beach ideas.

Does your teen love to cook and craft?

If you are looking for a fun summer craft for a teen which is also edible, you’ll love the edible beach glass.

This edible beach glass is adorable and delicious. It’s a great way to learn how beach glass is made.

Then there are the life skills cooking teaches, and some science and math worked into the simple recipe as well.

I also think it’s a great art project.

Whether the edible beach crafts are to be used as part of a unit study or for a fun summer-themed snack there are plenty of great ideas here.

So, include these excellent facts about beach glass.

5 Fun Facts About Beach Glass

1. Beach glass is the debris left behind by broken bottles and jars which have been broken. The pieces are worn smooth, have a frosted appearance from the combination of the waves, and the sand wearing them down.
2. There is a glass beach in Fort Bragg, California, but they don’t let you take souvenirs home with you.
3. Beach glass is also known as sea glass, mermaid’s tears, and sea pearls.
4. Common colors to find are clear, brown, green, and blue. Rarer to find are colors turquoise, yellow, and pink. Occasionally even red.
5. Sea glass/beach glass can be found in many parts of the world. It is commonly found along the coasts of England and New England, North and South Carolina, Kauai Island in Hawaii, and California. There is also sea glass along the beaches of the Great Lakes, but it does look different than the glass found tossed about in the ocean.

5 MORE Facts about Beach Glass

1. To age sea glass look at the tint- a light purple shade will be newer as manganese is added to the glass and turns purple with sun exposure, a green shade indicates that the glass is older.
2. Sea glass is highly collectible and is used in jewelry, glass mosaics, wind chimes, to decorate frames or even just stored in a mason jar.
3. It is much harder to find beach glass these days. More people are hunting for it on the beaches and many glass items packing items have now been replaced with plastic.  
4. Due to more storms and the reshaping of the shoreline, the best time to find beach glass is spring.
5. While often used interchangeably sea glass and beach glass are not the same thing. Sea glass is found on saltwater beaches, and beach glass on freshwater beaches.  The main difference in appearance is that the lakes aren’t as rough so there is not as much tumbling, making it less frosted and might even still have some shine to it.

Too, look at these other edible beach crafts for teens.

10 Edible Beach Crafts for Teens

1. Let them get creative with these Strawberry Sea Creature Snacks and see what they come up with.
2. Delicious for a hot summer day- Ocean Blue Lemonade Popsicles. I have added these Shark Attack Cheesecakes to my must-make recipe list, don’t they look amazing?
3. What a great art and cooking project this Edible Sugar Seashells and Sand recipe is.
4. These sand dollar cookies are just too precious.
5. Simple but these Beach Pudding Cups are a tasty and cute beach-themed treat.
6. Pinchable cute Beach Crab Sandwiches look delicious.
7. Learn how to Make a Sandcastle Cake.
8. Semi-healthy and a fun theme- Beach Ball Fruit Pizza.
9. I bet these Butterscotch Crunch Starfish are amazing.
10. Make a Fun Edible Coral Reef

More Beach Crafts for Teens Activities

• How to Dissolve a Seashell – Beach Hands-on Fun Activity
• Oceans Unit Study and Lapbook
• Edible Ocean Layers
• Egg to Sea Turtle Lesson Plans & Lapbook
• Quick Unit Study & Easy Salt water Density Ocean Science Experiment

Summer Crafts for Kids

Also, add some summer crafts to keep summer fun for teens.

• Pineapple Candle For Fun Summer Activities
• Super Easy and Fun Aquarium Jar Craft For Summer Activities
•  Making Ocean Layers Soap | Summer Activities
• 11 Fun Summer Activities for Middle Schoolers
• A to Z List: 100 Fun Summer Homeschool Unit Study Ideas
• How to Use Summertime to Put a Foot in Homeschooling

Grab a copy of Ocean Anatomy, not a heavy textbook, but rather a fun and beautifully illustrated flip-through full of great facts about the ocean and all that is in it.

Finally, look how to make fun edible beach glass.

Beach Crafts For Teens Make Edible Beach Glass

I highly recommend using flavorings coconut, mango, and banana to add a little something extra to your edible beach glass but it is delicious with just the sugar flavor as well.

You will need:

• 2 cups granulated white sugar
• ¾ cup of water
• ⅔ cup of light corn syrup
• food coloring -blue and green
• Flavoring oils – optional.
• Candy thermometer
• Silicone spatula
• Medium baking pot
• Baking mat

Directions:

Clip your candy thermometer onto the side of a medium-sized pan so that it doesn’t quite touch the bottom.

Combine water, sugar, and corn syrup into the pot and stir together.

Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the temperature on the candy thermometer reaches 300 degrees.

At this point, you must work very quickly so be sure to have all your add-ins ready to go with the caps removed, heat-safe bowls, silicone mat, food coloring, and flavorings.

Carefully remove from the heat and divide ⅓ of the mixture into 2 heat-safe containers like these Pyrex measuring cups.

Quickly stir a bit of green and blue food coloring as well as a bit of the flavoring oil into two of your containers. Leave the third clear but feel free to add flavor.

Pour the mixture from the pan and your containers onto your silicone mat quickly.

Beach Crafts

You don’t need to be neat just make a large blob shape. If it has started to set up, you can place the pan back on the heat for a minute or the glass cups into the microwave for 30 seconds to soften the mixture.

Allow it to cool completely until hard, this should only take 10-15 minutes but you can pop it in the fridge to speed up the process a bit.

Transfer the hardened pieces to a zipper bag or cover them with waxed paper and hit them with a little mallet or against the counter to break them up into smaller pieces.

Add pieces to a separate ziploc bag and add a few spoons of powdered sugar, shake to coat everything. This keeps them from sticking together and gives your beach glass the dull frosted appearance of real beach glass.

Dust off excess powdered sugar.

Check out this side-by-side of real beach glass and edible beach glass, you can hardly tell the difference!