Earth Day is an annual event, a worldwide celebration of our beautiful planet. It is also a great way to remind us all that we need to promote awareness of care of the earth through conservation and recycling.
It is important to teach our children at an early age to take care of their environment, watch their carbon footprint and tend to global warming so that Mother Earth will be healthy and vibrant for generations to come.
Let’s do something fun on Earth Day together!
Here are 5 simple Earth Day activities you can do with children to teach them a love for nature and their environment this April 22nd.
Fun Earth Day Activities for Kids
Exploring Mother Nature is a great way to celebrate Earth Day!
1. Go on a Nature Walk
Pick a local park with a nice trail and have a great time exploring the great outdoors.
Let your children discover objects that catch their eye or direct them to touch bark, feel rocks in their hands, study and compare different leaves, or hunt for bugs. Getting out and touching the environment is one of the best sensory play ideas around!
Your children may even want to bring along a notebook to journal or draw pictures about what they see. There is so much to do when you explore Mother Nature.
But don’t forget to bring sunscreen, insect repellent, and plenty of drinking water.
Seeing a landfill really puts into perspective how much trash we actually throw out.
2. Visit a Recycling Plant or Landfill
Take your children to a local landfill in honor of earth day so they can see where all the trash goes and ask them what the landfill might look like in 5 years. In the United States alone, 139.6 tons of trash are packed into landfills annually.
Water Pollution
Landfills can also contribute to water pollution .
Have kids learn about the water cycle and how one drop of water from the sky takes a magical trip to help our planet, but needs our environmental protection to maintain the beauty in nature.
Let’s chat about recycling!
Recycling
It is important to teach our children the importance of the Three R’s – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Show them the recycle symbol on the packaging in your home and teach them where to put the packages that can be recycled.
Tour a recycling plant in your area.
3. Make Recycled Art projects
Some of my kids favorite earth day activities are actually easy earth Day crafts! Leverage the idea of recycling for making something amazing with the entire family.
Go through some clean packaging material in your recycle bin and ask your children to think of ways to use this material for an art project:
- What can you do with cardboard cereal boxes?
- Old magazines?
- What about plastic bottles?
Your children just might surprise you with how creative they can be! Oh, and crafting is great for kids of all ages to help develop coordination and fine motor skills.
We even recycled newspaper into a paper pulp and recreated animal figures with it by pressing the into cookie cutters.
Let’s read a favorite Earth Day book!
4. Read a Favorite Earth Day Book
Earth Day is the perfect time to visit your local library and check out favorite earth day books. You will find lots of books with an Earth Day theme like wildlife that your child sees on a regular basis like birds and bugs in your area.
Help your children learn to identify the animals that live in nature around you:
- What colors are these creatures?
- What sounds do they make?
- Help them learn to identify the creature’s tracks or slime trails.
- What kind of texture is on the creature – fur, feathers, or a hard shell?
- Read to your children about endangered species.
- Take them to the zoo to see animals up close.
Let’s plant a seed in honor of Earth Day!
5. Plant a Seed or Feed the Birds
Do something at your home to help nourish the Earth like plant a seed. As simple as it sounds, it can be a meaningful Earth Day activity that reminds your kids about Earth Day year round.
Easy Planting Activity
Planting is so easy. Pick up some seeds at a local nursery or even your local discount store.
Pay attention to the particular seed’s recommended planting time, depth in soil, etc. Let children dig in the soil and plant the seed.
Teach them about the plant’s need for soil, water, and sunlight.
Help remind them to water their plant when the soil starts to get dry.
Are your backyard birds hungry?
Feed the Birds
You can also put out bird seed to encourage birds to your yard. This is so much fun for children to watch.
Help them learn to identify the different types of birds that visit your yard. Try setting up feeders around your yard with different types of seeds, bread, and fruit.
Which kinds of birds prefer each kind of food?
More Earth Day Activity Ideas from Kids Activities Blog
We have over 35 Earth Day activities for kids of all ages!
- Free Earth Day printables that are fun for your celebration
- Earth Day coloring pages for kids
- Earth Day crafts that are easy and festive
There are lots of great posts from other Quirky Mommas that help teach children to appreciate nature and our planet Earth. Here are just a few:
- Simple Ways to Save the Planet
- Living vs. Non-Living Cards
- Crafts with Leaves
- 5 Fun Ways to Entertain Preschoolers with Packing Material
- Earth Day snacks
- Print these Earth Day placemats for your Earth Day Lunch
- Fun Earth Day science idea with atmosphere for kids kitchen experiment
- And don’t miss out on these yummy and cute Earth Day cupcakes
Happy Earth Day! What Earth Day activities were your favorite?
