Earth Day Activities

It’s time for a fresh round-up of Earth Day Activities to use with children in the classroom or at home.  This post will highlight Earth Day learning activities, Earth Day read alouds, and Earth Day videos. The target age for this round-up is 5-8 years of age: Kindergarten to second grade.

Set the Stage for Earth Day

If you have the space, create a small focus board for Earth Day with images of Earth, animals, humans, plants, soil, trash, recycling, and anything relevant to your studies.  I usually did this in our writing station and materials area and then pulled from there to our mini-lesson easel and front board each day. Below are two anchor charts from different years of learning about our Earth.

Earth Day Read Alouds

Gather books on the topic of Earth Day.  I love to pull together both fiction and non-fiction books on the topic of our Earth, Earth Day, and other relevant studies like gardening, composts, recycling, other planets, etc. Here are some linked books you can find on Amazon to build up your non-fiction Earth Day library if you aren’t able to find great ones in your school library.

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Day Videos

Showing Earth Day videos is a terrific way to build understanding and background knowledge.  Teachers can have students listen for vocabulary words, focus on gaining information on a topic, and use videos as a form of research.

Always preview and screen any videos embedded online.  I did not create these videos.  These videos are being shared from YouTube.

Earth Day Song

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Song

Earth Day Activities

First up in our Earth Day Activities is our fresh new Earth Day Lapbook.  Students can do these activities following a read aloud or video for about a 30 minute per day science activity leading up to Earth Day.  These activities can also be done in stations once students know how to complete the activities.

Earth Day Book

 

What’s better than one Earth Day Book? That’s right, TWO!  The new Earth Day book is in the same download as the original paper bag Earth Day book.  You can mix things up year to year for your Earth Day learning.

Paper Bag Earth Day Book

When I first created the Earth Day Book, I used paper bags as our foldable.  The same content is in both books.  You can decide which you would like to make each year! The download has step-by-step picture directions for making both books.

Paper Bag Earth Day Book

Digital No Prep Earth Day Classroom Interactions & Fun

On the day of Earth Day, our Digital Earth Day slides make a great themed day of learning and interactions for students.  Throughout the day, integrate these no prep slides to provide Earth Day activities for ELA, social studies, math, and science with nothing to prep!

Digital No Prep Interactive Activities Included

• Earth Emojis– figure out the Earth Day phrases using clipart clues
• Earthquake Compounds– bring together two words to make one compound word
• ‘World’ Search– complete the Earth Day word search
• Scavenger Hunt– go on a simple and fun earth day scavenger hunt
• Color the Earth– fill in the missing parts of the fraction phrases and fraction parts to match the earth fraction models
• Skipping Rocks– skip count by 2s, 5s, and 10s
• Recycle Race– a fun picking up trash activity
• Tree Traits– conduct a nature walk and write attributes of earthly items
• Unscramble– unscramble the Earth Day words
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle– sort the everyday items into the correct recycle containers
• I Love Earth- share/write a reason why you love the earth
• Earth Bingo– Earth Day BINGO game
• Peas on Earth– put the Earth Day words in ABC order
• Help the Earth– sort the pictures by Helps the Earth or Hurts the Earth
• Trash Tally– make the correct number of tallies for each trash can

 

Spring and Summer Topics

If you love a good lapbook, there’s many more where that came from!  Here’s a post sharing even more spring and summer science topics in booklet form.