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50 Fun Earth Day Activities for Kindergarten Students
Inspire your kids to appreciate our Earth with these fun Earth Day activities for Kindergarten students.
Earth Day is April 22nd. While it’s fun teaching little learners about this holiday, we should be teaching kids of all ages how to take care of planet Earth everyday.
As you look through these earth day activities for kindergarten students, you will the perfect Earth Day craft for kids from prek, kinder, first grade, and beyond. Each of them are a great way to teach kids how to take care of the earth.
After reading through these fun activities, be sure to keep scrolling to see the BONUS tips from my amazing friend, Tina, a Natural Classroom Specialist. I am beyond excited to have her as a guest writer, and can’t wait for you see her great ideas at the end of this post.
Earth Day Activities for Kindergarten Students
- Go for a nature walk with this free nature scavenger hunt printable.
- Create a photo collage of things in nature
- Write the Room: Flowers and Plants
- Collect a bag of leaves, and do a leaf sort
- Make a mud pie. This would be great for sensory play!
- Practice letter formation with rocks and sticks
- Make a small aquarium to collect things you find outside (grass clippings, leaves, sticks, rocks, snails, etc)
- Take a magnifying glass outside and observe nature up close. The findings would make great writing prompts.
- Do science experiments to teach the water cycle.
- Tell Earth Day jokes
- Collect the rainbow: Find something for each color of the rainbow that can be found in nature
- Write the Room: Bugs and Insects
- Learn new Earth Facts and ways you can take care of the planet
- Go for a shape walk outside. Find shapes in nature.
- Play with an interactive globe
- Make a pendulum to explore gravity
- Watch a space video
- Do a virtual tour of the NASA Glenn Research Center
Recycling Activities
- Use old bottle caps to make your own stamp.
- Turn an old egg carton into a craft tray, painting tray, or sorting tray
- Clean up a park. Kids can collect plastic bottles and fill the recycling bin.
- Create a recycling center for the classroom or the home.
- Pick up litter from your neighborhood (wear gloves)
- Make upcycled crafts: It’s so much fun turning one person’s trash into a treasure.
Planting Ideas for Earth Day
- Build a fairy garden
- Make a kid-sized garden
- Plant flowers with the entire family.
- Add a plant to your home or classroom. This is a great starting point for kids to appreciate and care for all that mother nature brings us.
- Plant a tree
- Flower Facts Building Sentences or Making Words
Earth Day Books and Poem Ideas
Reading books and teaching Earth Day songs helps keep the learning fun, while spreading the message about taking care of our planet.
- Read The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. This is a great book for an Earth Day theme.
- Sing an Earth Day song. This Old Earth is a great song for an Earth Day Celebration.
- Read “The Earth Book“
- Add This Old Earth printable to a poetry notebook.
- Teach the kids about Recycling with the Recycle Poem. Sung to the tune “This Old Man”, This Old Earth is the perfect song to bridge your lessons about recycling. When teaching kindergarten, I loved hearing the kids sing this song as they worked on the Build a Poem activity.
Get a collection of glass, paper, plastic, and tin cans, and let your kids sort the objects. As your sorting through the objects, talk to them about the importance of recycling to reduce our carbon footprint on Earth.
Earth Day Craft Ideas
- Gather and paint rocks
- Sit outside and draw or paint a picture of what you see in nature.
- Make your own paper
- Paint letters on rocks: Use them for letter identification, name building, or to build sight words.
- Paint numbers on rocks: Put rocks in order, or match sets of objects (leaves, seeds, etc) to the numbered rock
- Make a watercolor Earth
- Earth marble painting: Cut out a circle from white paper. Put it on an old edged cookie sheet, or in a copier paper lid box, along with 2 marbles. Add some blue and green paint, and let the kids roll the marbles around to cover their earth.
- Print out Earth Day coloring pictures
- Make a coffee filter Earth. Simply color coffee filters Earth colors then mist them with water.
- Make a bird feeder, and hang it outside your window
- Create shapes out of things found in nature (i.e. Take shape cards outside, and use pine cones to make a circle)
- Make Earth Day discover bottles
- Melt old blue, green, and white crayons in circle molds to make Earth Day Crayons
- Weave an Earth Day Paper Plate craft
- Make a playdoh Earth ball
- Make a rain cloud craft
- Build something out of sticks
Ways to Incorporate Nature-Based Learning (By: Tina | Teach the TK Way)
Getting children outside where they learn about beneficial insects, local wildlife and edible plants is a key component to nature-based learning. As you search for Earth Day activities for kindergarten students, I wanted to share ways you can add nature to your learning space.
- Grow an edible garden: Planting an edible garden and making a snack from the bounty teaches children the joy of growing their own food. They have a great time trying new foods, too! You’ll quickly see them wanting to play garden with their peers.
- Design a Butterfly Garden: Design and plant a garden that will eventually draw hummingbirds, honey bees, and a variety of beneficial insects to the learning space.
- Create an Outdoor Reading Nook: An outdoor library can consist of books for young children. Books can be taken apart, pages can be laminated, and the whole book re-bound with yarn, metal rings or pipe cleaners. It’s a simple activity to start an Earth Day discussion.
- Embrace Loose Parts: Loose Parts are any manipulative that can be moved, rearranged, and used with an open-ended purpose. Allowing children full access to loose parts can be fun AND challenging. The fun part is when the children begin to rearrange the learning space to suit their needs. They move scaffolding and tires to create a playhouse, or maybe its a seesaw or perhaps a space ship. The challenge is allowing children the time and space to create.
Nature-based learning is a key concept for covering standards and objectives across all academic domains, no matter what age the child might be. I hope that this spring season you are able to incorporate more nature into your day, more outdoor time, and more time to connect with your children, learning about our Earth and all of its wild areas.
Until Next Time, Happy Learning, Tina
Bio: Tina can be found at www.TeachtheTKWay.com where she shares all about becoming a Natural Classroom Specialist with her readers.
Conclusion
Thank you for visiting Little Learning Corner for the perfect Earth Day activity. A special thank you to my friend, Tina, for contributing valuable tips to incorporate nature based learning with your Earth Day lessons. Together, we all can take care of this world we live in, and make Earth a better place.
Before you go, here are a few blog posts you may enjoy:
5 Fun STEM Science Kits for Kids
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50 Earth Day activities for Kindergarten Students
