Are you starting an Earth Day theme in your preschool classroom or homeschool? Keep reading for the best Earth Day preschool activities around!
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PRESCHOOL EARTH DAY ACTIVITIES
Every year on April 22nd, we celebrate Earth Day. It’s a day to remind us about the importance of taking care of our planet. There are opportunities to participate in tree plantings, clean-ups, and other environmental awareness activities.
Earth Day is such an important holiday to teach (whether you’re homeschooling or teaching in a preschool or kindergarten classroom). Yay for Earth Day will help your little ones understand how things grow and why we recycle. They will love learning about and participating in activities for Earth Day!
Keep reading for 10+ Earth Day activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students. These ideas include literacy, math, and hands on activities. Grab your printables for math & literacy here. Oh, and there’s a freebie, too!
You can also extend the learning by teaching an Earth/Volcano theme this month, too!
If you want a copy of my yearly themes (including an editable version where you can type in your own themes), check out this freebie. (*Please note: You will need to download this file to your computer and then open it with Adobe in order to add your own themes. You cannot add your themes from your web browser.)
PRESCHOOL EARTH DAY ACTIVITIES: LITERACY
Before you get started with your Earth Day theme, make sure you have your books ready to go! For this unit, we’re going to use our Earth Day book list, which has over 20 books for you to choose from! This list includes books about different characters talking about and celebrating Earth Day! Make sure you request these from your local library (or order from Amazon) a few weeks before you start your theme.
Phonological awareness skills are the key building block to reading success, which is why they should be practiced a little bit every day. In order to keep things fresh & engaging, I like to use phonological awareness games that go along with my current theme. Click here to check out these Earth Day phonological awareness games that will help your little ones become strong readers in less than 10 minutes a day (and with zero supplies!)
You’re definitely going to want to start your Earth Day theme with these vocabulary cards! Do your littles know what recycling is? Have they ever planted a flower or a tree? These cards are the perfect way to introduce your little ones to the 15 Earth Day related words they’ll be learning about over the course of this theme. You can use these vocabulary cards in your writing center or in a Write the Room activity where they will choose a vocabulary card, say the word, and match it to the picture on the activity page. Then they write the word on the line.
“Color the Room” is a variation of “Write the Room,” where you hide the vocabulary word cards around the room for your little one to find and have them match the picture on the card to the picture on the activity page. They can choose to color the matching picture or simply circle it. This is a great variation for little ones who aren’t ready to write the words on their own yet.
Coloring by code is always a fun activity for little ones. In this activity, they will be practicing uppercase and lowercase letters. Have them sound out each letter and color in the sections of the picture with the correct color. Are they able to name the picture they colored and tell what it has to do with Earth Day?
This activity can be used in various ways to practice letter recognition and more. Little ones will choose a letter card and tell you its sound. They will then decide if it is uppercase or lowercase and place it above the correct recycling bin. Other activity ideas: they can put the letter cards in alphabetical order; they can look for objects around the room, decide what letter the object’s name starts with and place the object below that letter card; they can use the cards to play Memory or Go Fish, where they try to match uppercase and lowercase letter cards; you can tape the letter cards on the wall and have little ones say the letter name and sound as they throw bean bags at them, etc. The possibilities are endless! Remember…the more they practice their letters, the more proficient they will become!
Using the letter cards from the previous Letter Sort activity, little ones will choose letter cards to make CVC words or longer words if they are able. How many words are they able to spell?
PRESCHOOL EARTH DAY ACTIVITIES: MATH
This activity can be used in several different ways depending on you little ones’ level. After making the cute recycle and trash bin, little ones will decide if the picture on the card can be recycled or thrown away. The apple cores are even numbers (trash) and the plastic bottles are odd numbers (recyclable). They can also count out small manipulatives for each number and decide if the number is odd or even.
As with the previous activity, little ones will be working with odd and even numbered cards. They can put them in numerical order and practice skip counting by twos. How high can they skip count?
Subitizing is the ability to look at objects and recognize how many there are without counting each one individually. Here’s a link to a review video about subitizing. After practicing, the hand and recycle bin puzzle pieces can be mixed up in a sensory bin. Little ones will choose cards and try to match them to the correct tally mark puzzle piece without counting each item. The more they practice, the more proficient they will become!
Bingo is always fun to play and will make learning about different shapes more exciting! First, your little ones will try to identify the name of the shapes on the cards. Some they will know, but they might need help with other less common ones. Then the shape cards can be placed picture side down on the table. Little ones will take turns choosing a card, saying the shape name, and placing a small manipulative on that shape on their Bingo mat. Whoever gets 5 matches in a row first wins the game!
This activity can be used differently depending on the levels of your kiddos. Little ones can choose a card and hopefully tell you how many hearts there are without counting each one individually (subitizing), or they can choose an addition or subtraction problem card and place the hearts on the ten frame that correspond to the problem and try to solve it.
One mathematical concept that gets little attention in preschool and kindergarten is symmetry, but it’s an important concept to teach! In this activity, little ones will try to match picture cards to the scene on the left to create a symmetrical picture. This is a FREE activity that can be downloaded from this blog post.
Earth Day is also a great time to learn about our earth’s landforms (like volcanoes) and natural resources. Check out this blog post to learn more!
YAY FOR EARTH DAY: HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES, CRAFTS, SNACKS, AND STEM PROJECTS
Earth Day is also a great time to learn about gardens and flowers. Little ones will use play dough to create the different stages of a growing sunflower. Head to this blog post to check it out!
Little ones will learn about recycling in this activity. Here’s a link to a You Tube video about recycling that you and your little ones can watch. Then, they can create items out of play dough and decide if they can be recycled or not.
This is a yummy treat for little ones to make and enjoy when learning about Earth Day. It is made with chocolate pudding, cool whip, Oreos, and gummy worms. For complete instructions check out this post.
This is a great way to get your little ones interested in science. They will put celery stalks in water colored with food color. Have them hypothesize what will happen to the celery overnight. The next day they can observe what happens to the celery. Was their hypothesis correct? Do they have ideas as to why the celery looks the way it does?
Little ones love to paint rocks and decorate the yard or the community with them. All you need is smooth rocks that have been washed and paint markers. Talk about how they might decorate their rocks so they relate to Earth Day and have fun!
Earth Day wouldn’t be complete without a sensory bin! This version is filled with colored rice. Check out this blog post for complete direction on dyeing rice (it’s super easy & fun!)
EARTH DAY PRESCHOOL & PRE-K FUN
I hope these ideas helped you fill-in your Earth Day lesson plans for your preschool classroom or homeschool! All of the printables for this unit can be found in my Yay For Earth Day Activity Pack.
What types of Earth Day preschool activities do you plan for your little one? Do you have any fun activities that would be great to add to this list? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
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Happy Learning!
