Earth Day Activities

We are learning about recycling, plants and seeds, and being a friend to the earth in honor of Earth Day, which is coming up very soon. (April 22nd).

Earth Day Activities we did in my Kindergarten class this week.

Earth Day Writing Projects

I love this part of the year where spring is starting to bloom with tulips and daffodils everywhere, new birds and nests all over the trees, and the weather is starting to change and get warmer. My students are loving it too.

I visited Thanksgiving Point recently to see some of the gardens and loved all the tulips in a variety of colors.

We’ve been so lucky to have springlike weather early in Utah this year. I love it!

I wish my garden looked this wonderful. The colors of all the flowers was just fantastic.

So we did watercolor painting on Monday using coffee filters to make the earth. I put out watercolor paints and used a spray bottle to get just the blue and green wet. Then passed out paint brushes and coffee filters. This makes it easier than using cups of water which always spill. I just walked around respraying the blue and green with water. Then we glued the dried “earths” onto black construction paper.

Then we colored some rainbow cutouts that say “Take Care of Our Earth”.  You can also download GOOGLE EARTH  onto your computer and show the kids the earth all the way to the close up school from way up in the sky as it moves closer and closer to your neighborhood. It is way cool!

Kids do lots of neat things all around the whole world on Earth Day to help and to participate.

I have lots of neat books on Earth Day and they help remind us that we are keepers of the earth. We can help keep it clean, and we can reduce garbage and water usage, even when we are only 5 years old! We read a few Scholastic News on Earth Day that I have collected over the years too.

And I found some cute math graphing activities HERE at TPT on the theme of Earth Day that are freebies! Yay! There were also some cute pieces of stationery for writing.

Just some of the 20 books I have on EARTH DAY topics. I have downloaded copies of things from the U.S. EPA Department too that have many free activities for kids. HERE at epa.gov is a color book. HERE is a free activity book to download too with mazes, math and other fun things.

After that we colored rainbows and glued down hand die cuts to show how the earth is “in our hands”. Then we sang a few earth day songs and read some books on how we can recycle.

BOOKS

From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons

My favorite is Michael Recycle. It is a really funny one on a little superhero comes to help us learn how to take better care of things in our homes and yards.

Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert is a great book we read right before planting veggies and doing our “Planting a Rainbow” Mural. We added the “parts of the plant” after designing our own flowers and leaves.  The insects and butterflies are stickers.

Planting a Rainbow mural.

We colored our own mini book on steps to being helpful on Earth Day. Then we wrote a few ideas on how we can do our part. And we planted our own radish seeds into pots of dirt. Then we made a mural of our own “Planting a Rainbow” like the book above. It turned out really pretty. We all did either a leaf, a flower, or a glued on a seed or stem.

Take Care of the Earth. Plant a plant or tree on Earth Day, April 22nd.

We wrote about things 5 year old kids can do to help keep our earth clean and green!

We decided to plant little seeds into biodegradeable pots from Home Depot. I think I got these at Walmart for $2.50 for 24 of them. Then I got free seeds and potting soil (excellent resource) from Thanksgiving Point. The guys in charge of the gardens there do a few classes a year for teachers and gardening enthusiasts and they gave me a box full of stuff for free. Such nice people there!

TERRARIUMS (using empty 2 liter bottles)

A really fun activity to teach seeds and plants is to make individual terrariums. A good step by step how to is found at this link to Teaching Tiny Tots HERE. I love how she used ivy. I’d like to use fast growing grass seeds or radish seeds so the students can see the roots and how they grow up into stems and then on the radish, leaves. Start by reading the book From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons. She is a master of children’s science books.
 2 Liter bottle terrarium instructions HERE

I made this pretty Earth Day banner that says “LOVE OUR EARTH” and strung it up on twine. Then I added blue and green ribbons to the ends. It is neat. You can get a free copy HERE. as the banner on our bulletin board.

Another fun activity is making these EARTH DAY Bracelets on a pipe cleaner. They are easy using green and blue pony beads and some foam beads I got at HERE at Oriental Trading is some foam shapes that have peel and stick. I’d take pictures of the kids and make a picture frame with them.

• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup salt
• 1 cup water
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• blue or green Food coloring
• Mix it all up in a mixing bowl and blend for a few minutes. Add 1 package Blueberry Koolaid for a cool smell. Put into “snack bag” size ziplock baggies. 

HERE is a cute bookmark and writing paper. HERE is a mini book we copied and read. And  HERE is a bingo game. It was a little advanced for my kiddos having terms such as “fossil fuels”. But it would be great for older kids 3rd grade and up.

 

The students did a good job coming up with ideas for me to write on the board. So we did a brainstorm of Things like picking up trash at the park, turning off the water while brushing teeth, recycling old clothes and toys, planting flowers and trees, and not being a litter bug.

Here are our finished pots and seeds to finish off our week of projects. I like doing radish seeds because they only take 3 weeks to germinate. So the kids won’t have to wait long to see some stems and leaves sprout!

Happy Earth Day April 22nd! Plant a tree, or a bulb, or some veggies in your backyard today!