Category: Earth Day

Earth Day Patterning – free printable

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Celebrating our Planet on Earth Day (22 April) is a good occasion to have another patterning activity with the well-known symbols like the recycling sign, bins, bottles, newspaper, plants and the globe itself. In the past we did quite a lot of patterning activities on Valentine’s Day or on St. Patrick’s Day and it has always been a hit with E.

(The link to download the free printable is at the end of this post)

As soon as she saw the prepared material she sat down to work on it. First, we named what she can see in the picture. She could name them all. She didn’t understand why there was a tree among the picture cards:

E.: – Why is the tree here?
M.: – Because they make the oxygen for us.
E.: – Yes, and we need air.

She didn’t ask about the flower, though.
When she found the water drop picture, she simply stated: – We need water too.

She moved from the easier ABAB pattern…

 

…to a little bit more difficult AABAAB and ABBABB patterns

 

We left the most difficult to the end: ABCABC But she enjoyed it very much, although it was hard for her to concentrate this long.

The four sheets were long enough for her. She didn’t want to make her own patterns on the empty grid. Maybe at another time. But you can do it 🙂

Download the Earth Day pattern activity for free on this link. And have fun!

Earth Day 3.0 – sticky Earth

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Today we have made another fun Earth related activity:

It was a sudden idea so I didn’t do the preparation myself. It was a real whole-family task.

What you need:

– contact or sticky paper (here in Hungary you can buy it as the sticky cover for school books)
– green and blue crepe paper
– scissors
– permanent marker (preferably blue)

Optional for the letter:

– green cardboard strips

While I was drawing the Globe on the transparent side of the sticky paper my dear family were cutting the crepe paper into tiny pieces. Excellent cutting practice for little hands. If you don’t want to give scissors into your little one’s hands they can also tear the crepe paper. Then we fixed it on the wall and pulled the paper off. (Note: you need to draw the mirror image of the Earth and after peeling the cover of the sticky paper you need to fix it on the reverse side – sticky side-out – on the wall)

 

Sticking could start. Green went on the land and blue, on the seas and oceans.

It took a while and we needed to help E. She wouldn’t have had patience and persistence to do it all alone.

When we finished, E. stuck the letters up. We directed her how to put the letters. Although we did this activity in Hungarian I chose to put on the English word for our planet as it would have been awfully difficult to cut out the accents in ‘FÖLD’ in Hungarian.

HAPPY

DAY!!!

Earth Day – Painting Crafts

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Before the recycling activity we had done some Earth related crafts like this mess-free zip-lock bag painting. Even very small kids can enjoy pressing the paint into all directions.

 

What you need:

– a plastic bag that can be sealed (I used Ikea bags)
– a paper plate
– green and blue paint

 

Process:

– put the paint on the paper plate (I put a little more blue than green as there is more water than land)
– place the paper plate (very carefully) into the plastic bag and seal it
– seal the bag

You’re child will know what to do right away, I’m sure. If not, tell him or her to press and see how the paint will move everywhere.

E. realised how much more she can spread the paint with the edge of her hand.

The first plate had too much paint on so we pressed it against another paper plate. Although it is called a MESS-FREE painting method, with this change everything became grubby.

 

I used leftover baby paint so it was easy to clean up.

E. enjoyed it so much we needed to paint one more Earth.

 

 

Here is the final result:

Another activity was dot-marker painting of Planet Earth. (If you have no dot-markers you can use cotton buds and blue and green paint or simply colour the dots with markers)

I searched for a picture of Earth and I made white dots on land and sea as well.

I wasn’t surprised at all that she started to count the dots while she was painting them the right colour.

We ended up writing the numbers and Earth next the Globe. E. traced my numbers and letters. This is her new “hobby”. As you can see she stamped some hearts all around Earth, because:
– I love you Mommy, and the Earth, too.

You can find more ideas of Earth day fun and crafts on my Pinterest board.

Here is the downloadable dot marker Earth .

 

Earth Day – recycling

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April is dedicated to paying more attention to our planet, Earth. 22 April is Earth Day so we did some activities both in English and Hungarian  to “celebrate OUR Earth” – as E. has put it modestly.

While we were painting, drawing and selecting we used plenty of special phrases. I’ll put together a word list concerning Earth Day and recycling in one of my upcoming Earth related posts.

But now, in this post, here comes some selective rubbish collection fun:

Preparation:

    1. I prepared 5 boxes (4 shoe boxes and a blue, IKEA box)
    2. Then I printed, coloured (you can print the bins on coloured paper) and stuck the bins with different labels (plastic, glass metal, paper) on the side of the shoe boxes.
    3. I selected some rubbish items from our recycling bins:
      – beer cans
      – tins
      – a milk and juice carton
      – scraps of paper
      – magazines
      – a glass olives jar
      – a cider bottle (glass)
      – plastic bags
      – bottle tops and plastic bottles
      – yogurt cups (etc.)
    4. I placed the rubbish in the blue box.
    5. I let E. do the selecting.
First, she was checking what is what, which went with several questions.

She didn’t really know how to make a difference between the different materials although she had been helping sort out the rubbish in our everyday life.

So I asked her a few questions and showed her the actions at the same time:
– Can you crumple it up? (And I was crumpling up a piece of paper)
– Can you tear it? (tearing a piece of the magazine’s cover)
– Is it flexible? (I was smashing a yogurt cup)
– Is it hard? (knocking my finger against the glass)

She was copying me while I was showing her crumpling, tearing or smashing.

And she got the hang of it:

 

 

 

I also mentioned to her that we need to flatten the cartons so she tried it.

Having finished we took the boxes to our selective bins and put them in their designated places.

 

E. was really excited about recycling and rubbish selection. Before dinner she wanted to watch “recycling videos”. And she did. Here they are:

Peppa Pig – recycling

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Il1RX6_h9Xc?feature=player_embedded

Betsy’s Happy Earth Day

https://www.youtube.com/embed/PlBLO8_2ix8?feature=player_embedded

Mother Goose Clube – Earth is our home

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gLAp30NQ0E0?feature=player_embedded

What is recycling for children? – HooplaKidz

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gSATRSB4OcE?feature=player_embedded

Happy Earth Day, Everybody!