As Earth Day approaches, it’s the perfect time to engage your elementary students in fun and meaningful Earth Day activities that promote environmental awareness and stewardship. While we want to promote the preservation of Earth’s natural resources throughout the year, this holiday is a great time to deep dive into the meaning, its importance, and how we can get involved in the process.
These five engaging Earth Day activities will help students understand the event and more through reading, science, and art!
Before engaging in activities about Earth Day, we should dive deeper into the history of Earth Day and its importance. Students can read an informational text that explains the content on their level.
Understanding what Earth Day is and why it is important to us is a necessary start to engaging students in further discussion and Earth Day activities. Especially, as we begin to integrate science and nonfiction narratives.
As you are reading about Earth Day and having classroom discussions, encourage students to think about what they already know about the environment. Chances are they have already learned different ways to protect it.
Use informational texts and graphic organizers to build upon their background knowledge. This will also allow students to make a Text-to-Self Connection by allowing them to reflect on how they can make small changes to better take care of our Earth.
Incorporate nonfiction texts about flowers, plants, and trees like the book Seed to Plant. This is a great time to integrate science and reading in the classroom. Students can learn about the process of planting, the parts of a plant, and the science behind how plants help our Earth.
Students can create a diagram of a flower while also labeling the parts and explaining the job of each part. For example, in the image above, students assemble a flower on a flapbook. Each flap represents a different part of the flower and under each flap, students explain how the part functions and helps the plant.
Additionally, students can show what they know by writing about the parts of a flower.
Enhance your Earth Day lessons with a picture book that explores the beauty of our Earth. The book My Friend Earth is a wonderful example of this. It is poetic, vibrant, and interactive while thoroughly explaining how Earth helps us and how we can help it.
In addition to informational texts, incorporating narrative nonfiction texts about people who have made a difference in protecting our Earth is a great way to inspire our students. These books celebrate the beauty of nature as well as encourage students to think about their impact on the environment.
For more book recommendations, check out my full list of favorite Earth Day books.
After reading the picture book, you can up the excitement by turning Earth Day into a celebration! Encourage students to think about how they can help the environment like the leaders they read about in the stories. As a visual representation, students can make Earth Day headbands to show they are ready to care for our environment!
Engage your students in a creative Earth Day activity by using this FREE directed drawing of a flower. After reading an Earth Day book, students can make a visual for inspiration.
The book The Curious Garden is a great companion to this activity. When a young boy discovers a struggling garden, he decides to take care of it, eventually leading to a beautiful garden that spreads throughout a once dark, gloomy city.
You can make it more meaningful, by having students draw on top of old newspapers, paper scraps, or other reusable materials. This will show students how to reuse materials to create art!
After drawing their flower, students can write about how they can help the Earth. This does not have to be complicated. Encourage students by providing examples of things they encounter in everyday life that they can make an impact on, like picking up trash in their neighborhood.
Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
