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5 Fun and Educational Earth Day Activities for Kids
Celebrate Earth Day with your students this year by planning some creative, hands-on activities they will love! You can make a lasting impact on the way your students think about their environment and nature in general while also having plenty of fun. From recycling projects to sorting real items, these Earth Day activities are sure to create environmental awareness among your students. Read on for five of my favorite Earth Day activities for kindergarten.
Earth Day Center Activities
Learning centers make incorporating seasonal themes, like Earth Day, easy! Adding Earth Day activities that practice kindergarten skills to your literacy or math centers makes learning engaging and fun. Here are just a few center ideas from my Earth Day Centers pack that you can incorporate into your kindergarten classroom:
1. Earth Day Vocabulary Activity:
Students will build Earth Day vocabulary words using magnetic letters.
2. Earth Day Roll and Add:
Practice addition with this low-prep center! Students will roll two dice and add the dots. They will color the corresponding number on the page.
3. Plant a Forest Sequencing and Sensory Bin:
Students will plant a forest in this sensory bin! You can adjust your bin as needed, but I included a plastic trowel, miniature trees, and forest animals in my bin. I also created “planting a tree” sequencing cards. There is a numbered version and a non-numbered version.
Class Recycling Sort Activity
Teaching about the importance of recycling is a big part of learning about Earth Day in kindergarten. One fun way to learn about and practice recycling is by doing a whole class sorting and graphing activity!
I ask students to bring one or two recyclable items from home. Be sure to have a couple extra items on hand in case someone forgets! Click here for a free, editable family letter to use to collect items.
Once all the items are in, we identify all the items brought in, then talk about what category they fit into (paper, metal, glass, plastic). Have students sort their items. Finally, work together on the graphing page shown below.
Make Something New in a Make-It Station
Give students the chance to make something out of items that would otherwise be tossed! Collect items in a large bin and give students time to go create something from their imagination in a make it station. Here are some ideas for what to include:
- Milk and bottle caps
- Paper scraps
- Scrapbook paper
- Cardboard tubes
- Bubble wrap pieces
- Craft supplies
- Fabric scraps
- Yarn
- Small boxes
- Pipe cleaners
- Tissue paper
- Googly eyes
- Stickers
- Wrapping paper pieces
Add some art supplies like scissors, tape, and markers, and your students will be set to make their own masterpieces!
Here’s a link to free printables for your make it station!
Earth Day Read Alouds
Having a variety of good read alouds is essential to any unit of study in primary grades. I put together a list of some of my favorite Earth Day Read Alouds for kindergarten – click here to check it out!
Melted Crayon Craft
This activity takes a little bit of planning, but it’s totally worth it! A great way to help students understand the concept of reusing something vs. throwing it away is by making these melted crayons!
You’ll need lots of broken crayons (wrappers removed). If you haven’t been saving them, check with other teachers in your building or ask parents if they have some to send in.
Have students each fill a heart-shaped mold with broken crayons (here’s the mold I used). You’ll want to keep track of which crayon belongs to which student, so keep that in mind!
If you don’t have access to an oven at school, just melt the crayons at home and let them cool overnight.
I have full instructions on how to make these melted crayons, plus a card you can attach them to! Fill out the form below to have it sent to your inbox.
