Celebrating Earth Day with Preschoolers

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This Earth Day Activities Pack is perfect to celebrate Earth Day with your preschoolers. Earth Day is celebrated each year on April 22 around the world with special events. As an Earth advocate, I consider that it is a perfect opportunity to teach our children about the importance of our Planet Earth, the many environmental concerns that exist, how we can help this planet stay clean and healthy, and introduce important concepts such as recycling, reusing, reducing, planting, pollution, and protecting endangered species.

This FREE 15-page long Earth Day pack, includes literacy, math, science, and fine motor activities. You can download it at the end of this post.

Why Is It Important To Teach Our Children About Earth Day?

Children are the future, and they might be the only ones that are going to make a difference in protecting the earth, and everything on it. If we can teach them now how to protect the earth and its resources, and what things they can do to keep it healthy and clean, it might make a difference for generations to come. They need to know that if we don’t do something about it now, Earth might not survive, and everything in it might die, including us.

How Can You Teach Your Preschoolers About Earth Day?

First, I believe that is something that you have to do every day, not just during Earth Day, but there are special activities that you can do to celebrate this important day. These are just some ideas:

Create a Recycled Art

Every year we invite parents to take something that is considered garbage and turn it into art with their children. The projects that come back to us are incredible! Families can use plastic bottles, tin cans, sticks, cardboard containers, stones, etc. The possibilities are endless, and it’s a powerful way to teach our children about recycling and reusing.

Write a Group Story About Earth

After talking about Earth, recycling, endangered species, or reading a related story, invite your preschoolers to write their own story, helping them decide what it’s going to be about, and what characters they are going to include. When it’s finished, type it and print it separating the different paragraphs into sheets, and inviting the authors to illustrate it. Then, make a copy for each author to take home. You can laminate the original and place it in the library, to be enjoyed by the entire class.

Plant a Wildflower Garden

Another activity we like to do on Earth Day is inviting the families to bring a small plant and plant it in our garden with their children and teachers. Teachers use the opportunity to talk about how wildflowers provide a source of food and shelter for bees, butterflies, and other insects, and how these animals help support our food systems through their pollination activities.

Then we finish the activity with a family picnic, and when the parents leave, the children go back to their classroom and do some artwork with their teachers using recycled materials. It is super fun and educational. As a follow-up activity, the children water their plants every day and get to learn about how plants grow, conservation, being responsible, and loving what Earth gives us.

Plant a Tree Campaign

I love this one! I did this activity several times with my high schoolers (like a century ago), but there’s no reason why you cannot do it with your preschoolers. Start by finding out about a neighborhood, park, or any other local place that needs trees. Request the necessary permits and create a campaign inviting your families to participate in a planting day. Every family donates a small tree that they can plant with the children in the selected space. If you don’t want to go through all this planning, you can always find out if your area has a tree-planting event, and invite your families to participate in that as well.

Inform Your Families About Local Events for Earth Day

Since Earth Day is celebrated across the globe, many cities have special events during this day and do things such as picking up garbage from beaches and parks, putting together fairs and marathons, children’s events, and fundraisers for conservation funds. Find out what is going to be happening in your city, and make a campaign to promote your families’ participation.

Talk About How People Around The World Celebrate Earth Day

These are some examples of activities done across the globe. You can use this information and do a social studies lesson, teaching your preschoolers about some of these events. It might not be a good idea to talk about all of them at this young age, but at least you will have some information to choose from, according to the developmental stage of your children.

USA – Children plant a butterfly garden at the Graham Creek Nature Preserve (Alabama), many civic organizations have rallies, teach-ins, marches, and pop-up shops, Scientists provide training sessions, and many other local events.

Canada – celebrates Earth Day using educational talks, activities, and parades.

Budapest, Hungary – Bicyclists ride the Elisabeth Bridge across the River Danube to celebrate the Critical Mass Earth Day bicycle ride.

Granada, Spain – celebrates Earth Day by holding the Global Unity and Regeneration Gathering, a 24-hour event that includes workshops and presentations about helping the environment.

Copenhagen, Denmark – they have a drum-playing celebration at the Christiansborg Castle Square, which points to the four corners of the world. Then they have the March for Science, seeking to hold elected officials accountable for conservation initiatives.

London, Great Britain – activists and musicians have an event to raise funds for British groups that fight climate change.

Switzerland – The International School of Geneva is a private, non-profit international school that hosts a green sale during Earth Day, to raise funds to plant trees on school grounds throughout the area.

Tokyo, Japan – they have a two-day celebration in Yoyogi Park where thousands participate in family activities and learn about companies that encourage sustainability.

Philippines – they do expensive marathons as part of Earth Day Celebrations, having different choices that go from $5,000.00 to $42,000.00.

Thailand – Buddhist monks gather to give alms at the Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple, lighting up 3,030,000 candles.

Dubai – Students make smoothies using a pedal power machine, demonstrating that there’s no need to rely on electricity for everything.

India – encourages to dress in green and puts on events to protect the Asian elephant, an endangered species.

Sydney, Australia – hosts four different nature walks with experts, bike giveaways, and storytelling.

South Africa – hosts the Earth Expo, presenting educational forums on sustainable nutrition, and other topics.

Teaching About Reducing Resources

Have an experiment to demonstrate to children how much water we waste in simple activities. Place a container under the faucet and have a child brush his/her teeth with the water running constantly. Then place another container and do the same, but this time the child will only open the faucet when needed. After the activity is finished, help the children measure the amount of water collected in both containers and have a discussion about which container has more wasted water and what we can do to conserve water. You can also introduce ways to conserve energy and natural resources as well.

Demonstrate Pollution

This is another powerful and very illustrative experiment. Talk to the children about pollution and the impact garbage has on our water sources and the fauna in the world, then take a clear container and put it in a corner where children can see it clearly without being dangerous to them. After that, have each child take a piece of garbage from their snack or lunch and place it inside the water. Let this garbage stay there for several days. As the water changes, use the opportunity to talk to your children about how garbage affects our environment and change it.

Have an Earth-Inspired Sensory Bin

This sensory bin is very easy to put together because you just need a few meaningful materials. Fill a container with water tinted with blue food coloring or tempera paint. Include green plastic mini trees, different species of animals (birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibious from land and water), mini rocks, seashells, and any other natural items you can think of. As your children play, encourage their curiosity, wonder, and conversation by talking about nature, Planet Earth, and how we all live together and need each other to survive.

Teach Them About Sustainability

As I said at the beginning, children are the future conservationists (hopefully!), but to accomplish this we have to teach them about sustainability, climate change, pollution, deforestation, and other important issues, so they can understand real problems that are happening in the world right now, and inspire them to be part of the solutions in the future.

The best way to do this so they can understand it better is by using hands-on experiences with real-world problems and coming up with solutions together, to be implemented in their day-to-day lives. I think that the only way we can make a difference in their minds is by helping them learn responsibility, compassion, and how to love and protect nature and everything in it, encouraging them to talk to everybody about what they learned. This way their knowledge can have a real impact on their community, and be an intricate part of their brain’s blueprint.

Some of the things you can do to teach them about sustainability are:

Invite them to use a reusable water bottle instead of plastic, and cups with spouts instead of straws.
Remind them to brush their teeth without running water and turn off lights when they are not necessary.
Include hands-on activities, large and small group activities, audio, and videos to reach all types of learners.
Incorporate environmental issues and all types of lessons (literacy, math, social studies, art, etc.), not just science.
Teach them to use the trash and recycle bins, not to waste materials.

Other Activities You Can Do

I’m sure you can come up with multiple activities appropriate for this celebration, but I just want to give you some more ideas that I have used in the past, successfully. These are:

Invite an arborist, gardener, veterinarian, conservationist, and any other related expert to come to your classroom and talk about his/her expertise, and what children can do to support his/her efforts in the future.
Have them decorate a box or a plastic container to be used as a recycle bin in the classroom.
Have an exhibition using the art done at home or in the classroom with recycled materials, and invite the families to come and see it. If you want to push it, you can even have prizes.
Do art projects using recycled materials.

Earth-related Books

Reading to your children is an excellent way to teach your kiddos about anything, and Earth Day is no different. Many books are appropriate for this theme. Any books about environmental topics, recycling, protecting the earth, endangered species, energy, and water conservation, for example, are ideals for teaching your children about Earth and how to protect it. Below are some examples. You can find them at your local library, used book store, and on Amazon. Following my affiliate links embedded in the titles will take you to the right page in seconds.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. This beautifully written and illustrated book offers a touching interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another’s capacity to love in return, much of what Earth does to us all.

I Am Earth by James McDonald. This book introduces kids to the basic concepts of Earth science while also encouraging the importance of taking care of our special planet through environmental awareness and sustainability.

Making a Difference by Stacey C. Bauer. It uses beautiful illustrations, color photos, and interesting facts to tell stories of kids who are making the world a better place by doing amazing things such as planting a billion trees, bringing joy to others through music, fundraising for sick children, or starting an inclusive dance team.

How Holly Celebrates Earth Day by Kimberly Kendall-Drucker. This book talks about how Holly explores flora and fauna around the globe. Then Holly and her family find ways to replenish, reduce, reuse, and recycle – to make every day – Earth Day!

Eyewitness: Endangered Animals by Ben Hoare. Is a wonderful resource that teaches about creatures around the world that are currently threatened with extinction, along with the ways that we can help them survive.

Earth Ninja by Mary Nhin. This book was developed to help children learn valuable life skills, talking about recycling, reducing, and reusing.

What a Waste by Jess French. It is a lively kid’s educational book with fabulous illustrations and fun facts about plans to save our seas, how countries are implementing green projects worldwide, and how to turn waste into something useful.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. This story teaches kids to treat the planet with kindness, stand up, and speak up for others, and how one small seed, or one small child, can make a difference.

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Celebrating Earth Day With Preschoolers Activities Pack

I hope you enjoy these ideas and help you have fun during the Earth Day celebration with your preschoolers. To get the FREE pack, you just have to click on the link below and type your information, for an immediate download.

Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.

Love,

P.D. Please let me know if any of these ideas worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find helpful. Also, if you came up with different ideas and want to share them, I would love to post them as well.