Fun Earth Day Activities for Kids to Help the Planet

Most of us, adults, know well the 3Rs meaning – reduce, reuse and recycle and is important to make sure kids understand their responsibility towards our planet too. Every year on 22nd of April we celebrate Earth Day and it’s a perfect moment to educate and teach our children about our amazing planet and what they can do to protect it.

Here are some favourites activities we have made over the years with my daughter Aurora that is now 4 years old.

I have put together for this occasion a fun Earth Day Activity Pack FREEBIE – GET IT HERE!

Here is our list of activities you can enjoy at home or in the classroom.

Let’s get started!

Earth Day Activities list 🌏

1. Go play in nature

Go outside, have a walk in a park, or in a forest! Take a trip to the lake or in the mountains. The very best way to celebrate Earth is to connect and explore nature and be outside as much as possible. Kids are amazing natural explorers, they will find so many opportunities to birdwatch, listen to birds singing, observe insects and wildlife around them.

2. Organize an Earth Day Scavenger Hunt

While children explore nature explain them what they just found, have opportunities of vocabulary enrichment and communication.
You can use ready printed Nature Scavenger hunt templates.

Scavenger hunt templates I created:

1. Earth Day Hunt – check it here

2. Nature collection frame – here

3. Spring Learning Pack

3. Create a pinecone bird seeder

Let’s fed the birds by creating our own bird seeder from items we can have around the home such as pinecones or oranges.

See in the pictures what you need: a pinecone, bird seeds, peanut butter and a string!

4. Build an insect hotel

Have fun and build a bugs hotel from upcycling items you have around the house like a box and cannelloni pasta, add some plastic bugs, stones, sticks, leaves and some sensory fillers such as rice and taste safe earth from coffee, black tea and flour and let the fun begin!💚🐜

5. Start a seed jar

Create a lovely set up with some beans , little jars and cotton pads. Let the beans soak in lots of water inside the jars for a couple of weeks, they will spout like in the pictures below and grow little plants. Let the child observe and add water as he waits the plant to grow bigger. After 3 weeks set up a new activity and invite the child/children to transfer the plant in new containers. Use recycled yogurt jars or egg shells, add soil and invite the children to water their new plants. 🌱

It will be a beautiful experience to let the children watch their experiments grow before their eyes!

6. Make an Earth Day Handprint Keepsake

We just made this interesting activity with both my girls and they were so excited about it. Everyone is excited when working with playdough, isn’t it?

Watch here the tutorial and the blog post!

7. Learn how to recycle

Create a set up at home for your child using little objects and some recycling bins that can be the ones in the picture (these are pen holders and you can find them with low price in amazon and the little objects are actually stickers I bought on dollar tree, 2 years ago) and learn about recycling in a fun way!

8. Make nature art

Use sticks, stones, leaves that you gathered from your nature walk and paint them, create art, stick them on a paper frame or create an wooden sticks frame, add a sticky paper and ask your child to add nature treasures, like in this post 🌱

9. Grow flowers, vegetables or fruits.

Make your own little garden either you are living in a city or in countryside. There are plenty of opportunities to do it.

10. Go visit a farm

Take your kids on a farm visit trip. The opportunities of learning is huge and it’s so fun to see and learn how plants grow, to experience food directly from the trees/plants, create their own snack by picking food themselves and taste it. Also an animal farm is an amazing opportunity so the children can see for example where the milk comes from. This spring we visited both a vegetable farm and an animal farm and there were both amazing experiences for the kids.

I hope you enjoyed our post. There are a lot more ways to teach children the responsibility towards our planet in a fun way. These activities teach children to appreciate what the nature gives us and protect the environment and its resources. When we indirectly teach them through these fun activities, it will inspire and teach them to respect the environment around them and to make the world a better and safer place to live in! 🌱♻