Celebrate Earth Day in the classroom with 4 meaningful and engaging Earth Day activities that get students excited about protecting Earth’s precious environment. Students can learn about the local flora and fauna, research environmental issues affecting your area, make a bird feeder, clean up a local park, or plant a butterfly garden. Your class can make a difference!
Table of Contents
Earth Day Activity: Explore Nature with a Scavenger Hunt
Before Earth Day, take your students outside to explore nature. Have your class search for signs of spring in the trees around your school. Do they see buds or flowers? What are the leaves and stems like?
Have your students complete a nature scavenger hunt. Create a list of things they must try to find around the school – a bird, an insect, a tree, a flower, an animal, etc. Give your students time to sketch and write about the specimens that they find outside.
I give my students a Nature Scavenger Hunt page that I created. They take a clipboard and a pencil and we all head outside to explore nature on campus. Students sketch the specimens they find and add write to describe specific details about each specimen (color, shape, distinctive characteristics, etc.). When students find something interesting, they can share their findings with their classmates. I make sure that students know to move quietly so as not to disturb any animals and to not pick up or pull up any specimens. We are just observing, not collecting. This is a great way to get your students to observe the wonders of nature right outside the classroom window and get students excited about the importance of protecting our environment.
Have your students complete a nature scavenger hunt. Create a list of things they must try to find around the school – a bird, an insect, a tree, a flower, an animal, etc. Give your students time to sketch and write about the specimens that they find outside.
Earth Day Activity: Specimen Research
It is also important for students to learn more about their local environment. Have your students conduct simple specimen searches online or in books to learn more about the plants, trees, and animals that live in your local ecology. Let them go online to search for the type of flora and fauna that are commonly found in the area of your school. Have students select one type of plant or animal that they observed outside and have them write a short research report with facts about that local specimen. I give my students a one-page worksheet that has space for the scientific name, habitat, adaptations, and interesting facts about their chosen specimen. It’s a fun and engaging science project that helps students learn about the interesting flora and fauna right in their own backyard. Learning about the wonders of nature helps students understand how important it is to protect the environment.
Earth Day Activity: Clean Up and Problem-Solving
We love our school campus. It’s beautiful and green. We notice though, that there are certain areas of campus that have trash on the ground. Students can help the environment by cleaning up their school grounds. On Earth Day, we celebrate by helping the Earth. I give each group of students a trash bag, gloves, and a garbage-picker tool (I borrow these from our custodial staff) and we work together to clean up areas of our campus. As we clean up, I have students record and tally the type of trash found. Are they finding food trash (i.e juice boxes, snack wrappers, etc.), classroom trash (papers, erasers, etc.), or something entirely different? Students also record where the trash was found (playground, sidewalk, school entrance, etc.).
We love our school campus. It’s beautiful and green. We notice though, that there are certain areas of campus that have trash on the ground. Students can help the environment by cleaning up their school grounds. On Earth Day, we celebrate by helping the Earth. I give each group of students a trash bag, gloves, and a garbage-picker tool (I borrow these from our custodial staff) and we work together to clean up areas of our campus. As we clean up, I have students record and tally the type of trash found. Are they finding food trash (i.e juice boxes, snack wrappers, etc.), classroom trash (papers, erasers, etc.), or something entirely different? Students also record where the trash was found (playground, sidewalk, school entrance, etc.).
When the students are finished with the campus clean-up and tallying the trash, we Once students have collected all of their trash, we come together as a class and discuss possible solutions to our campus littering problem. I like to have my students write letters to our principal about the data we collected about trash and the possible solutions to the problem.
Earth Day Activity: Earth Day Choice Board Project
For a final Earth Day activity, I assign my students a project. I give them a list of projects to choose from:
- Poster
- Letter
- Art
- Research
- Service
- Invention
Students come up with creative ways to encourage environmental responsibility or to use trash or recyclable materials and transform waste into art or an invention.
I give my students a week in class during our science time to work on the project and many of my students choose to work on it at home too. (My students always love projects!).
After the projects are completed, our class holds a showcase. Students take turns walking around to see others’ projects and discuss the project with their creators. I also like to invite other classes, the principal, and families to come to a final showcase to see all of the amazing student-created projects.
Celebrating Earth Day in the classroom is one of my favorite activities of the year. These activities allow students the opportunity to learn about the environment around them, how special it is, and that it needs to be protected for future generations. Getting students outside, and seeing the beauty of nature helps students see the natural world around them. Cleaning up the campus and collecting data about the trash that is found, helps students see some of the problems affecting the environment first-hand. This activity also helps them become problem-solvers and they come up with some possible solutions to the litter problem. Finally, students can create a project of their choice that can show what they’ve learned about environmental responsibility and showcase their talents.
Like what you see? You can check out my Earth Day Activities Pack HERE.
Looking for more ideas? Read all about an Earth Day Research Project:
I’d love to hear how you recognize Earth Day in your classroom. Leave a comment to let me know.
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