Earth Day Preschool Activities, Lessons, and Games

FREE Earth Day Crafts and Activities and Earth Day Book Suggestions

Earth Day Preschool Learning Center Ideas

Math Center

Collect and reuse bottle caps. Let children sort, count, and build with bottle caps.

Pretend Play Area:

Collect clean egg cartons, old magazine and store flyers, clean, washed cans, plastic bottles, foil scraps, etc. Create a recycling center and let children sort the different items in to containers. 

Earth Day Activities and Games

Listen to Nature Sounds 
Play some relaxing nature sound music. Have children lie on their backs, close their eyes, and listen to the sounds. Stop music and ask children what they heard. Hand out a piece of paper and have children draw a picture while listening to the music again.

Recycle, Protect, and Reduce
Discuss with your children that we need to recycle things so we stop creating so much trash. We need to stop wasting our precious resources like water and protect the living space of animals and people. We need to stop polluting our air, land, and water. We need to save energy and use our natural energy resources like the sun or the wind to keep our Earth a healthy place for living things.

Let's Use, Reuse, and Recycle

Let's use, reuse. and recycle.
Let's keep Earth as clean as can be.
The more we reuse, the less we abuse
Our wonderful land, air, and sea. 
Jean Warren

More Earth Day Activities and Crafts available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library

More Recycle Songs:

The More That We Recycle 
(Tune: Did You Ever See a Lassie Go This Way and That?)

Oh, the more that we recycle, recycle, recycle,
Oh, the more that we recycle, the happier we'll be.

Cuz your earth is my earth
And my earth is your earth
So the more that we recycle
The happier well be.

A Recycling Song 
(Tune: Frere Jacques)

Save your bottles, save your bottles,
Save your cans, save your cans
Bundle up your papers, bundle up your papers,
That's the plan, that's the plan.

Protect our Water Earth Day Activities

Talk to children about why water is so important to us. Learn about where water comes from and explain the water cycle with our The Little Raindrop story booklet and water cycle activities (available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library.)

Preschool Activities: 

Media Root

Learn about the water cycle online at (http://www.kidzone.ws/water/index.html).

Talk about the need to keep rivers, lakes, and ponds clean for animals to live in and for us to have good water to drink.

Water pollution activity:
Place a white carnation in a container of black-colored water. The colored water will work its way up the stem and into the flower, turning the flower gray. Discuss how water pollution can get into plants. Animals and humans eat plants. What can pollution do to us?

Talk about how we can save water. Turn off the water while brushing your teeth, etc.

I Can Help Our Earth Earth Day Craft (Step-by-step instructions available inside our KidsSoup Resource Library)

Keep the Earth Clean: 
Explain to children that they can help keep their world looking clean by making sure that trash goes in the wastebasket and not on the ground. Have children keep an eye out for litter and clean up their neighborhood or school ground.

Keep the Air Clean:
Read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

Talk about the story and air pollution. Discuss how trees and plants help to clean the air. Plants and trees turn carbon dioxide into the oxygen that we need to breathe. Explain that we cannot see air but that it is all around us and that we need to keep our air fresh and clean to be healthy. Trees also help keep the soil from eroding away, and they give animals a place to live. Plant a tree or plant.

Air Activity: 
Have children blow through a straw, trying to move a cotton ball, paper, etc.

Earth Day Sun Print Craft
Take a dark colored craft paper and arrange different items such as leaves, flowers, yarn, and other items on the paper. Place in sunshine for about one hour. Remove items and paper from sunshine. Only the silhouettes of the items will remain on the paper. Your children just made a sun print.

Planting Activity: 
Have children plant flowers and plants and then watch them grow. Recycle a milk carton and make it into a beautiful planter for planting seeds or growing plants.

Preschool Activities: 

Media Root

Plants and Trees Activities and Games

Save Trees 
Author unknown

Save trees
It's a breeze!
To recycle paper
You be the maker!

Forest

Talk about the importance of a forest with all its trees and plants. Take children on a trip to a forest and collect different forest items. At home explore and create some art with the collected materials.

Forest, trees, and plants activities and crafts available inside our KidsSoup Resource Libary.

Preschool Activities: 

Media Root

Earth Day Resources Worksheets and Coloring Pages

The Lorax Earth Day Lesson	Earth Day Coloring Page	Earth Day Door Hangers	Friend of the Earth Award Printable

Recycle and Earth Day Crafts:

Bottle Balero Toy Craft 

Preschool Activities: 

Media Root

Cut the bottom off a small plastic bottle. Cut a strip of craft paper that fits around the bottle. Decorate with stickers, craft paper, etc. Add glue to the bottle and wrap craft paper strip around the bottle. Let dry. Tie a string of yarn to the bottle neck. Take a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil and place yarn on top. Form aluminum foil into a ball.

Game play: 
To play "ball in a cup" or balero, the player holds the toy at the bottle's neck and lets the ball free fall. The player then has to toss the ball upward by jerking the arm holding the toy. The main goal of the game is to put the ball in the cup.

Earth Day Book Suggestion:

Easy to Be Green: Simple Activities You Can Do to Save the Earth	I Can Save the Earth!: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle (Little Green Books)	The Adventures of an Aluminum Can: A Story About Recycling (Little Green)	The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle: A Story About Recycling (Little Green)
The EARTH Book	The Three R's: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle (What Do You Know About? Books)	Curious George Plants A Tree	Compost Stew
The Lorax (Classic Seuss)	Where Does the Garbage Go?: (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)	Michael Recycle	Why Should I Recycle? (Why Should I? Books)