One thing I will always remember from my childhood is that my Girl Scout leader told us to always leave a place better than it was when we arrived. This was even before the original Earth Day.
Here are some of the Earth Day activities I am doing with my students this year.
For first and second grades, I am beginning with a Maya and Miguel Video called Earth Day is Every Day. In the movie, students do a class project of cleaning up a vacant lot and creating a community garden. My district subscribes to Discovery Education and I found it there. On the Elementary Tech Teachers ning, of which I am a member, one of the other teachers gave this PBS Kids link to the same video.
After the video, they will go to the Eeko World site and find the best environmental choices in the Eeko House.
I found a video called Betsy's Kindergarten Adventures: Happy Earth Day, for Kindergarten on YouTube. Then they will read the Earth Day story on Starfall. They can also do a Reduce, Reuse, Recycle jigsaw on JigZone. Next they will play Michael, Michael, Go Recycle on FunSchool. As Michael makes his way through the maze, he picks up items of trash that can be recycled. He can only pick up five items before he must sort them into three different recycling bins. They will access all three of these in the Holidays tab of my Only 2 Clicks site.
I learned of the Happy Earth Day video from this Kindergarten Earth Day Pinterest.
On a personal note, my husband and I are in the process of getting quotes for a solar power system for our roof. It's pretty exciting to be creating clean energy that will not only provide power for our home, but will also contribute to our local power grid.
