Earth Day Magic in Kindergarten ~ Ep. 30

earth day magic
Apple
Spotify
Amazon Music

Episode Summary

In this episode of Kindergarten Cafe, I discuss the significance of Earth Day. I share how I incorporate Earth Day activities into my classroom to teach students about environmental awareness and taking action to care for the planet. From observing nature and cleaning up litter to planting and creating art projects with earth-friendly messages, I provide engaging and purposeful ideas for celebrating Earth Day with students.

In this episode, I share:

  • Importance of Teaching Environmental Awareness
  • Classroom Activities for Earth Day
  • Encouraging Action Through Creative Projects
  • Earth Day Crowns and Stories

Resources Mentioned:

Earth Day Books:

There are lots of other books that are great for Earth Day activities. For your convenience I have them linked to my Amazon affiliate store.

There are also some great videos and songs your students will love!

Connect with Zeba:

Read the Transcript

[00:01:32]:
Hello, I’m Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and in this podcast episode, we are talking all about the upcoming holiday, Earth Day. And fun fact, Earth Day is also my wedding anniversary. It’s easy to remember that way, but also not really planned for the significance of getting married on Earth Day. It just was the right weekend day for us. But I do like that it’s usually sort of over April vacation for our anniversary. Although this year it’s the day after April vacation for us. We have April vacation? Yes, that is a New England thing, I think. Anyway, this year will be seven years.

[00:02:11]:
I cannot believe that. That’s just. It’s been a long time, I guess. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel that long. Feels like just yesterday. Anyway, enough about me. That’s what I’m doing for Earth Day. Let’s talk about Earth Day in the classroom and what I will be doing with my students on April 22, Earth Day.

[00:02:33]:
You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Ziba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone, ready to start saving time and reducing your stress, all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love. Let’s get started.

[00:03:25]:
Kids need to learn about the environment and how to be responsible global community members, and Earth Day is the perfect touching off point for those lessons, those discussions, being responsible and caring for our earth. And so that’s sort of the goal that I use for Earth Day, is talking about that environmental awareness and moving it not just to awareness but into action. How can we help our earth? These lessons and discussions, of course, can and should be happening all year long, but it’s definitely a good day to have more meaningful conversations and related activities. So what do I do with my students on Earth Day? Like I said, oftentimes Earth Day falls during vacation. So I plan before vacation or after vacation to spend some time doing some of these activities. But this year I will be doing it on the actual Earth day, which is very exciting because we come back to school Monday, April 22. So one idea of an activity that you can do, that we like to do is doing some observations outside and maybe even some cleanup outside. So one idea is to take students outside to just observe nature.

[00:04:38]:
Go on sort of a nature walk, a mindfulness walk, talk about what you hear and see and feel, just like kids sort of observe the nature around them. Look for signs of spring as it is April. And the other idea is to help them to clean up litter and maybe, you know, around the playground or around the school. And that is a way to help take care of our earth is cleaning up litter. If you’re doing this, I suggest giving the kids gloves just because you’re not sure, like what they’re touching, and maybe have them in small groups if you can, or take them out in small groups just because you just never know what you’re going to find when you’re picking up litter. And you don’t always want kids touching certain things. So that could be disposed of in litter. Just be mindful of that.

[00:05:27]:
It’s a great activity to do if you have your own kids because you can really be watching everyone. But you know, I did have students once that saw some trash in the playground. They asked to do this, and so I was like, fine, you know, and that, that’s a little different because I could see exactly what the trash was that they were talking about. But if you’re going to go out in groups, just have an adult there to really watch over what they’re picking up and have a plastic bag ready to go to put all the trash and so you’re not just holding it. Another activity idea that you could do outside if you have a garden area, or you could do inside if you don’t. But is planting, planting with students. I definitely do this in the spring. Every year with my students, we plant different flowers and different seeds and watch them grow.

[00:06:11]:
But Earth Day is a great day to do this, and it’s especially a great day if you have the space available to plant trees because that’s definitely like a good symbol for Earth Day. But it all depends on your outdoor space and school space. But planting is another great activity to do with students to celebrate Earth Day. You can also do some art projects with the kids, you know, drawing nature scenes, creating beautiful paintings, or creative works of art that showcase their favorite nature scenes around the world. Or even I’ve seen really cool earth specific art activities like using think it’s shaving cream, like you use food coloring to make it green and blue and sort of make it all interconnected. Or you can use a coffee filter with green and blue. But there’s really fun creative art activities to celebrate the earth and showcase the earth. But you can also take this a little step further by having kids create posters with some earth friendly messages.

[00:07:16]:
We tend to do this in connection with our persuasive writing unit. But what is it that the kids want to let the world know about in order to help our earth, right? Or the local community, not necessarily just the whole world. But do they want kids to pick up trash on the playground? You know, do not litter the kids, that’s a go to want a classic. Do not litter and have them make posters. And then you can actually hang them around the building or on the playground. Maybe they feel strongly about whales and they want to say, save the whales or protect the whales or don’t hurt the whales. You know, they have their own kid friendly messages that they want to use, but encourage them to be persuasive and to share their feelings about the earth and what they want the action to be for people to take. It’s a really great lesson and it’s a nice connection to Earth day as well.

[00:08:09]:
But it’s taking that idea of, like, let’s take care of our earth a step further into a bit more of action, into convincing people that they should care about the earth, too. And how should they care about the earth? What should they be doing? And like I said, great persuasive writing connection there. But I love, you know, getting them, giving them the opportunity to make those posters and then actually hang them up places. And I had a girl who was very concerned about the litter on the playground one year. Not, this is not connected to Earth day, but she was talking to me about it, and I said, well, make a sign if you want, and then we can hang it up. And she was so excited, and so we hung it up and took a picture of it. And I don’t know how long it actually lasted on the playground, but it made her very excited to see that she could make a difference by telling people, don’t litter on our playground. Take care of our earth.

[00:08:59]:
So that’s one idea. Kind of take the earth day creative projects a step further into more action. And it’s a great curriculum connection as well. And finally, I just love doing crowns for different holidays. So I do have an Earth day crown that the kids decorate and we put on their heads. And you can get this in my teachers pay teachers store with the link down below. But I do, you know, love doing this activity with them in the morning. And then later in the day, we’ll read Todd Parr’s the earth book, because I love how it has really, you know, earth friendly, kid friendly ideas for how to be friendly to our earth, for how to take care of our earth.

[00:09:41]:
And so each page is a different example. Some are a little silly. Some are great. And then from there, I have the kids make their own version, their own page, and we turn it into a class book of ways that we can take care of the earth. So I love hearing their different examples. So, absolutely, on April 22, I will be doing a crown with them, and we’ll be reading Todd Parr’s the Earth book, and they’ll be creating their own page to go along with a class book. And we’ll be going on some walks throughout the outside observing it. And I’m gonna just kind of see how it goes with the inspiring messages.

[00:10:16]:
But if the kids are into it, I’m absolutely going to encourage them to make posters to hang around with some ways that we can take care of our earth. Some other book recommendations that I love using every year and that I have out for April are. Here we are by Oliver Jeffers. This one is a little long, but is beautifully written. Earth Day every day is a good one to read on Earth Day by Lisa Bullard. It has some really nice ideas for taking care of the Earth. Then you have the Jen Green series. Why should I recycle? Why should I protect nature? Why should I save water? Why should I save energy? Those are all good for larger discussions on being responsible to our earth, being responsible global community members.

[00:11:01]:
What does it mean to be green? By Rana di Orio is nice for talking about the Earth and Earth Day. And then ten things I can do to help my world by Melanie Walsh has really good specific things that kids can do on their own to help save our planet and be responsible community members. There’s also some really good videos and we’ll put links down below. But Harry Kindergarten has a video, we’re going green. Jack Hartman has a video about recycling. Go Noodle has a video about mindfulness, a mindfulness video that’s all on taking care of the earth. And if you have brain pop junior, they have a great video called reduce, reuse, recycle. And you never know.

[00:11:44]:
If you don’t have brain pop, that could be their free video for the week. They tend to do that to the related videos. So you could check that out, but we’ll put all those links below. And if you’re interested in my earth day activities, then you can check those out as well. And whatever you do, I hope you have a very happy earth day. Okay, quote of the day this quote of the day really makes me laugh. You know the game the kids play of raise your hand? You know, the classic snack time? No matter which students you’re teaching, at some point they’re going to play this game where they say, raise your hand if you blah blah, blah, blah blah. And it’s always at snack time because they’re not sure how to talk to people yet about like, what’s going on in their lives.

[00:12:29]:
So instead they play the raise your hand game and it gets super annoying because then they’re all shouting over each other about raise your hand. Is it just me? No, I think we all can relate to this. Anyway, they’re playing this game and this girl says, raise your hand if you like climate change. And of course, being five year olds, not everyone knows what that is. So some of them raise their hand because they like to raise their hand. And then the girl goes, climate change is literally gas that makes the world warmer and ruins the earth. So good for her for teaching her class about climate change. Her delivery could have been a little better.

[00:13:06]:
It was a little shaming of the kids that didn’t know what it was. But these discussions are so important on taking care of our earth and helping make the world a better place. Kids are excited to be little activists taking care of the earth and making it better, and they get really passionate about different parts of it, whether it’s picking up litter or saving an animal that they love. They’re ready for this discussion, and Earth Day is the perfect launch point if you haven’t sort of talked about this yet. So if you have been listening this long, send me the code word earth Day and let me know that you’ve been listening. Let me know that you enjoyed it. That would be awesome. And if you can, please, please leave me a review. That would be a great anniversary wedding anniversary gift. But really, I just love hearing from you and hearing how this podcast has been helping. And if there’s a question that you have that you want me to answer in a future episode, leave it in the review and I’ll be sure to do that. Or if you have topics you’d love me to cover, I’m gonna be planning out my summer series, so definitely put that in the podcast. Or you can always send me an email, send me a DM and I’m happy to chat. Thanks so much.

[00:14:21]:
Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.

4 COMMENTS

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.