WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD….LOUIS ARMSTRONG SINGS
I see trees of green, red roses too
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| Earth Day Art! |
Earth Day is one of my personal favorite science/social studies units to do in whatever grade I’m teaching. I think it is sooooo important for kids to be taught awareness for how we are taking care of the living things of our earth. We take so much stuff for granted don’t we? Things like clean water that flows and flows from our faucets and land around our houses for planting fruit and veggie gardens, and how easy it is to throw stuff in the trash and have the trash man haul it away. Kids are not aware of landfills, wasting water while they brush their teeth, or reducing the amount of garbage we throw out. They have fun realizing that THEY can become recyclers. How GREAT is that?
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| Teaching kids about the 3 Rs, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle….for Earth Day! |
A fun contest is finding all the words you can make from EARTH DAY. A printable link from ABC teach is HERE.
So for Earth Day every year we start out by reading the book Michael Recycle. It is a funny book that introduces simple recycling, reducing and reusing to minimize waste. We discuss the 3Rs Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and what they each mean. Then we do a fun picture/word sort on what kinds of things we recycle. A link to a cute Earth Day RECYCLE SORT is HERE. Then we have previously asked for parents to help us find something to recycle into a pencil holder. Most of the kids bring in washed out cans, soup size or veggie size. Then we put colored masking tape along the top rim (in case some are still sharp) and then we pick out some scrapbook paper Mrs. Moss has had donated. I then have the kids choose a construction paper 2 inch ring to put around the top for writing. We use thin black “gel pens” and they put the 3 Rs over and over “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” 3Rs.
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| Other Earth Day Crafts can be found HERE at Kaboose Website |
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| Kids can recycle too! |
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| Teaching Kids how to recycle….. |
Then I give each child a cheapie Bic pen and a Walmart or Dollar Store pansy flower (they come in bunches for $1.00) and a 6 inch long strip of green, floral tape. They are to tape the flower to the pen as best they can by winding it around and around the pen. This is for their pencil can but we have RECYCLED things and REUSED too! OR they can plant a small plant in their Earth Day decorated can with a small caption “Keep the Earth GREEN” This also might be a great gift idea for Mom’s Day. I’ve done that in the past. It is still teaching recycling!
Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
(Tune: “Three Blind Mice”)
Reduce, recycle, reuse.
Reduce, recycle, reuse.
Now’s the time to choose.
There must be no excuse.
It’s up to each one of us to do
our part to make the Earth clean, it’s true.
So let’s work together, yes, me and you!
Reduce, recycle, reuse!
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| Next year I think I’ll come up with a recycling project to use with glass jars. They could each make some new invention from a Glass jar they recycle. I love doing those kinds of things…..it gets creative kids thinking! I found lots of crafty ideas HERE at Planet Pals website. |
Then we start a 3 Rs chart to use for a writing project later. The kids will add to it each day of the unit listing what kinds of things we can RECYCLE, what things we REUSE, and how we can REDUCE our trash. I pass out 4 inch round card stock badges to each of them to color and wear home.
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| Nova’s showing our brainstorming board before we wrote our Earth Day thoughts…. |
DAY 2
The next day we start by reading a Weekly Reader or Scholastic News on Earth Day and what it is around the US and what kinds of projects kids are doing to pitch in and help . Then we wash our hands to get ready for a fun song and art project. A link for printed instructions on this art project are HERE at DLTK Kids. I add peach paper hands holding the earth and glue it on black paper when dry. It looks pretty cool!. You can add a few a small rainbow to the bottom that says “Save the Earth”. I’ll post finished projects after Spring Break.
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| I punched out some little peachy hands for the kids to glue over the world… |
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| Coffee filters and watercolor made this cool earth art! |
We use coffee filters and green and blue watercolor paint and the kids paint the world or their rendition of how the globe looks. When they dry we glue them on black paper with 2 cut out peachy hands glued to the sides as if holding the earth. Under it we color a clip art rainbow that says “I Can Save The Earth”. While they are painting I read them the book Earth Day-Hooray! It is a great book because it is about recycling but it integrates place value math concepts too.
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| Some great Weekly Scholastic News that we read through… |
Day 3
The third day we talk about “The Water Wasters” and we read a mini play about kids who waste water. I have a water waster wheel I show the kids where it lists water activities like washing the car, brushing teeth, showering versus tub bathing and how many gallons of water each uses or wastes. We brainstorm ways to reduce our water wasting. The play is really cute.I think I got it from the EPA. A link is down at the end of the post. Then we do some worksheets in our “Earth Day Packet” I’ve made up for the week. 
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| I got the beads from Oriental Trading over the summer…I added green beads and the kids made these cute bracelets out of chenille stems cut to their wrist size and twisted when they were done. SUPER EASY! They also have Earth Day inflatable GLOBES you can get for about $1.00 each. The link is HERE at Oriental Trading! |
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| We made Earth Day bracelets…We’re Going GREEN! |
They also had a 24 pack of these cute pots to decorate and plant vegetables or flowers for a fun activity.
They were only $7.00 for the whole 24 pack. Now that is some money I would spend in a heartbeat!
Some wonderful songs can be found on the First Grade Factory’s blog. A link to her Earth Day Songs is HERE. I will choose a few to put on the backs of artwork we do. I always link up art and music so the kids are doing shared reading practice while singing songs and they don’t even know they’re practicing reading!
Day 4 Take Me Out to the Garbage!
We talk about “litterbugs” and how kids help by picking up trash at parks and beaches. We go outside on the playground and pick up trash in the corners and by fences for 10 minutes. They are amazed at how much garbage they come back with. Then when we’ve come back in and washed hands I read them Where Does the Garbage Go? And the book Trash. Kids don’t usually know about dumps and land fills and how fast they are filling up. Time for more discussions!
I have another activity we do cooperatively. I have a role playing activity where they pull scenarios out of envelopes and come up with solutions to some problems that kids could most likely solve such as seeing other kids littering, etc.
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| The Stationery is from a Scholastic Book of Stationery. The link is HERE at Amazon is Scholastic’s Stationery Book. Another one I love is this one HERE at Scholastic is a Month by Month Stationery Book.. I think both of these books are around $12.00. Both I’ve used probably more than any other teacher resource book. They are GREAT! |
Then we do an Earth Day Writing entitled….I Can Save the Earth By… and the students free write from everything they have learned about Earth Day. The results are always amazing to me. They really do “get it” and they have heart about keeping our earth healthy.
An activity they can do in my community is decorating brown supermarket bags with Earth Day pictures and messages. We only have to go pick up 20 bags and have the kids do the art and then return the bags. They also like us to make a few posters for the store. We may do that again this year.
A fun word search I made up for Earth Day can be found at this link HERE at Teachers Corner. I would
add some cute pics of the world to it. It is only text.
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| HERE is a World Floor Puzzle at Lakeshore that would also be a fun center activity for Earth Day! I think it was about $12.99 and all my students absolutely LOVE floor puzzles! What a treat that would be! |
A free resource I got years ago that helped with learning activities for this unit was from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) I think they had Superfund money but they sent me lots of really cool and colorful books, color books, badges, crossword puzzles and printables for kids. They will send it to you too. It’s called the Planet Protector’s Club. The link for you is HERE. This is where I made up my “packet” of worksheets from. There is a reader’s theatre in there too. Fun! HAPPY EARTH DAY!