7 Kid-Friendly Ways to Celebrate Earth Day
Are you looking for a great way to celebrate Earth Day with your children? The best way to teach your kids about going green is to help them fall in love with nature. So get outside, get dirty, and show your kids why this planet is worth protecting. Here are 7 cool activities to help your kids learn about the Earth:- Create art with leaves: Collect a few leaves from the backyard or your next nature walk, add a little paint to the back and help your kids press the painted leaves onto paper, folders, cloth, old furniture…you name it. Check out this cool leaf printing tutorial for more details.
- Press flowers: What better way to show kids the beauty of nature than to let them hold it in their hands? Simply press a flower between two heavy books and let it sit for a few days. Carefully remove the books and use the flowers to decorate a card or present. For larger projects, read up on how to press and preserve flowers.
- Make an underwater viewer: Check out this quick and easy idea for making an underwater viewer out of a coffee can and some plastic wrap. Be sure to take it along to your favorite stream, river, lake, or pond to let your kids get a better view of what’s going on under those waves!
- Take a bird walk: Help you kids get a better appreciation for their feathered friends by going on a bird walk. Sure, binoculars and a bird guide are nice. But all you really need are your ears to show you where the birds are. Listen for bird songs and let your kids help find the birds. Compare songs, pay attention to habitats, and make up silly bird songs of your own! Need a primer on birds and their songs? Check out this link on North American Bird Songs.
- Make a bird feeder: Now that your kids know all about birds, help them make a treat for the birds to celebrate Earth Day. Just roll a pinecone in some peanut butter (organic, if you have it!) and cover it with bird seed. Hang with string from a nearby tree.
- Start a shell collection: If you live near the beach, take a walk in the sand with your kids and check out all the beautiful shells the beach has to offer. Sketch your favorites in a journal and help your kids learn which is which. Check out this shell identification guide to learn more.
- Inspect insects: Did you know that there are about 6-10 million species of insects on this planet? So far, we know about roughly 5,000 types of dragonflys and about 170,000 types of butterflys. And that’s probably just the tip of the iceburg. Bugs are cool. Head out in the backyard with a shovel and a hand lens (like this $4 model) and see how many different kinds you and your kids can find.
Happy Earth Day!
This post is part of the Green Moms Carnival on Earth Day hosted this month by Alline at the Milkweed Mercantile. Head on over to her site and find out what other green moms are doing, saying, and thinking about Earth Day this month.
Would love to make the underwater viewer, but the link isn’t working. If you have a chance, could you email it to me?? Thanks!
Thanks for letting me know about the error! It’s fixed now, and here’s the link:
http://www.mnn.com/family/education-activities/blogs/an-easy-way-to-help-kids-explore-underwater
Thanks for reading!!
Jenn
I love your simple bird feeder idea. I adore birds! What a wonderful way to spend time with your kids on Earth Day.
Great ideas! I’m hoping Wednesday is a nice day so I can spend some time outdoors with my boys. I bought some light sensitive paper that you use to make imprints of leaves and flowers that should be fun with kids. Here’s a link for something similar if anyone is interested in buying some: http://tinyurl.com/dlwmar
Great post! We just had a Green Hour episode on WORMS. A perfect creepy-crawly creature to investigate in the dirt: http://www.greenhour.org/content/activity/detail/6922
Anne Keisman
greenhour.org
Love these simple ideas - may have to get some leaf printing going on! Hope you and your family have a wonderful Earth Day.
Jenn, these are great ideas. I am going to use some of them with our Sunday School - we’re trying to incorporate greener art projects!
Wish I could hang out like Mindful Momma suggests but I’m in a jury duty waiting room right now! Hey, at least it’s metro accessible and they have recycling bins! But Twitter is blocked from the WiFi network ….Arggh!
Today’s a work day so any extra activities are limited due to time. But since it’s not raining today like it was supposed to I’m going to take an extra long walk at lunc with the dog. Other than that, it’s the regular activies like doing laundry w/ homemade soap, cooking today’s meals from scratch, etc.
I love the idea of pressing flowers. My kids enjoy doing this and we make beautiful projects from it.
I did a lot of these things as a kid. One of the great things about having been homeschool.
What terrific ideas! Earth day is past, but I’ll be using some of these this summer! I LOVE the underwater viewer idea! Awesome!