One of the holidays we usually celebrate in the classroom is Earth Day. Even though teachers and students are all distance learning right now, we can still find ways to teach students about Earth Day and how to care for our earth.
I came up with some activities that would be easy to implement while teaching online. Some are crafts and some require no printing. If you’re not sure if your students have access to supplies for an activity, you can always just share it with parents as something fun to do on the weekend.
To help you engage students when introducing Earth Day or to review facts and vocabulary, try to include some songs and videos. You can email parents the links to videos or add them to Google Classroom.
If you normally include songs in your teaching, students will appreciate seeing some things they’re used to! Here are a few good ones I found that you might check out to see if they would be a good fit for your class:
Boom Cards™ have been so helpful to many teachers while distance learning. They are digital task cards that let students practice specific concepts. They are also self-grading so not only will you know they completed a deck, but you’ll be able to see how successful they were. Students will not be practicing incorrectly since they check as they go!
You can read all about Boom Cards™ on my blog HERE.
I have a Boom Card deck™ for Earth Day in my Boom store. They have some teaching cards, activity cards, and assessment cards all in one deck!
You can find it HERE. You can also find all of my Boom Cards™ in my store.
One of my favorite crafts to do in the classroom is an Earth Day necklace. The good news is that you only need a few things to make it. I shared the step-by-step guide for it in THIS blog post.
You can grab a FREE one-page guide for this activity HERE. This is perfect to email to parents or upload it to Gooogle Classroom. You can make this an optional assignment for students to do with their families.
This activity is flexible. If students don’t have paintbrushes, they can use cotton swabs or their fingers. If they don’t have string, they can simply make a paperweight!
Have students take a walk outside and find ways to help our earth. Ask them to be on the lookout for things they can do to make a difference in their own neighborhoods! They can look for litter to clean up or things that can be recycled.
Then, you could ask them to make a FlipGrid video about it, or write about what they found and how they helped.
Students can also make a t-chart with chalk outside of things that were trash and things that were recycled. Get creative!
Have your students write about what they have learned and how they can help our earth right now. I have some FREE Earth Day writing paper HERE. Just download it and send it to your students. There are a few ways you can jazz this activity up:
I hope you’ll be able to use some of these Earth Day activities while we are all distance learning. I know parents and teachers are all overwhelmed, and I get it! Try to choose activities that will be the least stressful for you to implement and not too difficult for your students’ families.
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By the way, if you have already purchased my Earth Day Science Unit, you can definitely use lots of activities from it for teaching Earth Day while distance learning. Use Loom to record yourself teaching from the teaching posters.
Then, you can easily assign students activities like:
Let me know if you need help brainstorming how to use this resource if you already have it in the comments!
I’m a K-1 teacher who is passionate about making lessons your students love and that are easy to implement for teachers. Helping teachers like you navigate their way through their literacy block brings me great joy. I am a lifelong learner who loves staying on top of current literacy learning and practices. Here, you’ll find the tools you need to move your K-2 students forward!
