Earth Day & Zero Waste Week Roundup
April 22, 2020 is Earth Week, and while we are currently in “safer at home lock down mode” we will still be celebrating our beautiful planet with some fun activities and lessons. This pic is from 2 years ago but we are all missing the ocean right now so the kids said I should use it!
Last year we did beach clean up all week and if you have old enough kids, and you are comfortable with it- doing some small scale clean up on a neighborhood walk is a great way to express some gratitude to Mother Earth. I recommend having something like THIS grabber arm to keep it safer and more sanitary! In this mad new reality, people are wearing disposable masks and gloves EVERYWHERE and sadly, many of them are discarding them ANYWHERE, which is leading to all kinds of not-cool-litter. The big upside, with everyone staying home- there are less flights, less cars on the road, less boats on bodies of water everywhere, fewer factories/businesses operating and therefore, it seems that there is a great deal less pollution happening in general. I’ve seen photos showing our own Los Angeles skyline and how stunningly clear the view is right now, and while this is challenging in many ways, reducing our footprint and smog levels are definitely a check in the win column.
Did you know this week is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day!? So cool! Earth Day marks the birth of the modern environmental movement started on April 22nd, 1970. You can learn more about the history and origins of Earth Day HERE.
During our first year officially homeschooling, in 2017 I was on the hunt for some new, creative ways to learn about Earth Day and get the kids inspired to save our precious planet and that’s when we first learned about and participated in Zero Waste Week. That first Zero Waste Week at our house helped us make many changes that have remained permanent, which is really cool. Since then we have pretty much made the month of April a time when we focus on studying the environment, thinking of ways we can help and using that as the base theme for our curriculum.
Obviously as far as life goes, this year feels very NOT NORMAL, but I wanted to pull together some of our favorite resources in one place and share them with you all.
My kids are animal lovers, nature lovers, and have taken some of their first steps, runs, and jumps on the sandy shore of the Pacific Ocean- they looooove the sea. Earth Week has probably been one of their favorite weeks every year, homeschool wise and otherwise. We hope you enjoy this too.
In this post, we’ve put together a GIANT roundup of our Earth Day & Zero Waste Week favorites! This is definitely a great week for learning and doing activities at home and online.
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BOOKS
Here are a few books we love for Earth Week. These are great for quiet reading time (aka “read and relax”), guided reading, reading aloud to your kids, etc - they all give plenty to discuss, write about and come up with math word problems for if you want to get all curriculum creative! If you search any one of these titles and “free printable” or “curriculum” you’ll find some good stuff! I would love to hear what YOUR favorite Earth Day/Zero Waste Week books are- please share the title and author with us in the comments below!
The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins
Life in the Ocean by Claire A. Nivola
We Are the Gardeners- by Joanna Gaines
Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor
Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story From Africa by Jeanette Winter
Why Should I Recycle by Jen Green
Fancy Nancy Every Day is Earth Day by Jane O’Connor
One Plastic Bag by Miranda Paul
The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle by Alison Inches
Anywhere Farm by Phyllis Root
Compost Stew by Mary McKenna Siddals
Also, a great online resource that is perfect for busy, working, multi-tasking parents is Epic Online- it’s usually $7.99/month but they are offering a month free right now so definitely check it out HERE .
Worksheets/Curriculum
Follow THIS LINK to a ton of FREE Earth Week Printables! (you can customize the grade level over on the left hand side).
Movies/Videos
Here are some of our favorite movies to watch and discuss during Earth week. I also recommend using the website Common Sense Media to check for age-appropriateness and content that you may or may not dub suitable for your little ones. It’s a great site that’s super helpful!
Biggest Little Farm- we watched this over several days, for the first time, last year. There were definitely some tears (all of us!) but we fell in love with this farm and since it’s pretty close to where we live, we are hoping to get there on a field trip someday soon!
March of the Penguins - We loved this movie and it’s so magnificent to see how the penguins do all they do! With their home in great peril due to global warming and ocean pollution, this is a good one to watch this week and discuss ways we can help ensure the penguins live and “march” on.
Wall-E- this one is a heavy hitter, but so important! Both of my kids love it, and it always gives us loads to talk about, beyond the excellent discussion potential you can also do a lot of project based learning using this story/film as inspiration!
The Lorax - Another great story that’s SO important! This one is always fun because as with any Dr. Seuss book there are loads of good art project possibilities. We also have this book so it’s good to read-aloud, then watch the movie- which also gives another opportunity to compare and contrast, do a Venn diagram and write about which you liked better and why.
Planet Earth - an instant classic, so beautiful and magical to watch. We are appreciating this one even more right now since traveling from our living room is about as far as we go these days.
Art & Projects
Here in Southern California it’s the perfect time to plant a spring garden! If you are somewhere colder, you can still sew seeds indoors and then plant them or move them outside when the weather is warmer.
Over spring break we did this super fun sewing Seeds in eggshells project (it’s only been about a week so no sprouts yet, but I’ll keep you posted) save the egg carton and the rinse/save the shells as you use 6 eggs! Add enough dirt to fill the ½ shell and add a seed (we did ½ tomatoes, ½ cucumbers)- water daily to see them sprout, then transfer in the egg to your garden!
We also made these adorable fairy house luminaries inspired by Crafts By Amanda using up-cycled plastic bottles!
…and these bees wax luminaries inspired by Woven Childhood.
You can find the instructions HERE.
For more fun art projects and printables and ideas you can check out my Earth Day & Zero Waste Week Pinterest Board!
Another great resource to check out is Scholastic, they have awesome stuff!
Biography Studies-
If your kids are reading and writing on their own, I highly recommend doing some biography studies, here are a few great people to learn more about during Earth Week!
Your kids can identify character traits, create timelines of the person’s life, write a research paper about their contributions, do an art project, make a flip book and more!
Here a few to dig into:
Rachel Carson
Sylvia Earl
John Muir
Kate Sessions
Greta Thunberg
This is a great list of young environmental activists your kids can check out and get inspired by:
https://www.earthday.org/19-youth-climate-activists-you-should-follow-on-social-media/
***BONUS IDEA*** One last fun one, if you haven’t already, download the iNaturalist app and go for walks in your neighborhood! Learn about all the beautiful natural happenings all around your home! My kids have been logging things in the back yard for like 45 minutes now!!
HAPPY 50th EARTH DAY and Zero Waste Week!!! We hope this brought you some fun ideas and inspiration to learn about and nurture our precious planet! Please share your favorite Earth Day books, shows, movies and pro ideas with us in the comments section below!