Earth Day

This week we celebrated Earth Day in the middle of our "Taking Care of Earth" unit. That worked out pretty nicely...almost like I planned it that way, huh? 

We spent this and last week learning about the Earth, it's natural resources, and our responsibility to take care of the environment by reducing, reusing, and recycling. I use this fantastic curriculum from EngageNY to show the kids pictures and read to them as if "Mother Earth" is talking to them. If you look around their website you can find more resources such as picture flip books, lesson plans, etc. 

We also used a few activities from a Go Green for Earth Day unit that I picked up a few years ago (I can't seem to find where I got it, but if I do I'll add a link!)

On Earth day we did lots of fun activities from that unit as well as my own Taking Care of Earth Unit.

 We did some ten frame matching with earths and raindrops:

Then the kids did their own ten frame worksheets but filled in raindrops instead of counters:

Next we did raindrop addition. I projected this little mat with two storm clouds on it and placed different numbers of raindrops on each side. Volunteers came up to the board to count, write the addition problem, and add:

Our next activity was an Earth Day Syllable sort. I gave each of them a card with a picture on it and we took turns clapping out the syllables and then placing the card in the correct pocket chart.

Finally we got to the part that I was most excited for - our Earth Day craft:

We started by writing on this heart template

1. Why we love the Earth

2. One thing that we promise to do to take care of it

(Disclaimer: The only word that I spelled for them was "Earth", the rest they came up with on their own)

"I love the Earth because it is my home. I promise to pick up trash."

"I love the Earth because it is our home. I promise to not lit(t)er."

"I love the Earth because it has natchrul (natural) risosis (resources). I promise to throe (throw) uwae (away) my chrash (trash)."

We glued the writing hearts to a larger red heart and then put them aside. 

For the Earths, I gave them one green piece of land at a time and showed them where to glue it so that it would actually resemble our planet in some way:

Lastly, I gave everyone a giant letter I and a giant piece of paper to put everything together on:

Once everyone finished, I cut them out and hung them up on our classroom door:

If you would like the templates for the craft that we did, you can click on the picture below:

Or if you would like all of the worksheets that we did in our taking care of Earth unit and the craft you can grab them all together here.