Choosing Earth Day activity ideas that can have a lasting impact is so important because we want to help students realize that the choices they make today will help our fragile planet. Finding Earth Day activity ideas that are relevant in the classroom can be challenging. I have a few engaging ideas to bring your Earth Day curriculum to life.
#1. Displays are an impactful Earth Day activity idea
Look at what students are using on a regular basis. Think about those plastic water bottles. Perhaps you didn’t know that to make just one of those single-use water bottles you’d need oil equal to the amount it would take to fill the water bottle 1/4 full! Bring in an empty water bottle. Fill it 1/4 full with water, but add food coloring so it’s visible.
Better yet, have students keep track of the number of disposable water bottles their family uses in a week. Ask students to bring in the used water bottles. Fill each of these with the food coloring and water “oil” and set them in very visible locations.
Here’s a fact that’s difficult to swallow: it takes hundreds of years for a water bottle to decompose. Hundreds. Imagine your great great great great great great grand kids having to clean up your trash. That’s a powerful statement. Connecting the impact we have on the planet makes our daily actions relevant. Keeping that impact in front of our faces makes it difficult to deny the effects of our choices.
#2: Experiment & take action for Earth Day
Experiment with plastic utensils. Find a compostable utensil and a non-compostable plastic utensil. Bury both in one planter or pot filled with dirt. Place them side-by-side and mark each. Keep the planter easily accessible. Do a monthly check on the plastics. Take a picture and post it in a visible location.
Check with your cafeteria. See if there is a plan in place for reducing the use of plastic. Does your school use metal or plastic utensils? Why? Have the class write a letter to your school district about the choices made in food service. Generally, it’s all about the money. Discuss this with your class.
Invite your students to research the cost of metal utensils in the cafeteria. There are magnetic trash can lids that will prevent the loss of metal utensils in the trash. If your district uses plastic utensils that are not biodegradable, as a class, propose an alternative to packaged plastic utensils used in the cafeteria.
Show your students alternatives to plastic utensils. Encourage students can bring your own reusable utensils that can be washed and reused. Show the compostable alternatives, and as a class look at how long it takes a plastic utensil to decompose. What does it take to make plastic?
#3: Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
It’s okay for students to feel uncomfortable during Earth Day activities. We all need to acknowledge that our habits might not be the best choices for the health of our planet. Many of us haven’t considered that our idea of convenient is really quite inconvenient for the planet.
When students have snacks, instead of throwing away all of the plastic baggies, collect them to use as a display. You can staple them up in one long line to wrap around the classroom, hallway, or school. Tally mark how many are used and thrown away each day. Show students how to wash out the baggies and hang them up to dry for future use.
Bury a plastic baggie in soil at the beginning of the year or today, and pass the container along to the next grade level. Once a month, check on the decomposition of the plastic. Show alternatives to single-use plastic bags.
#4. Empower students with knowledge
Here’s a great Earth Day activity idea that will have a lasting impact: Gain knowledge to help inform decisions. Pose key questions:
- What is plastic?
- How is plastic made?
- When did plastic become a thing?
- What it takes to make plastic?
- How did people survived without plastic for thousands of years?
- What was used instead of plastic?
- Are we too dependent on plastic?
- What can we do to reduce our use of plastic?
Have a debate.
Do some research on plastic. Students will discover that plastic is oil-based, and that oil is a contaminant. Knowledge can be used to make more informed decisions. Here’s a Scientific American post on the history of plastic.
#5. Make your Earth Day activity Ideas immediately relevant
Let’s talk cell phones as a relevant Earth Day activity. Most of us have a cell phone. Many students have one. What does it take to make a cell phone and where do cell phones go when we trade up for the newest version?
Did you know that there are numerous environmental and human rights issues associated with cell phones? Cell phones need valuable precious metals and minerals like gold, silver, cobalt, copper, and arsenic. Cobalt mining is a linked with child labor, slave labor, and dangerous working conditions. And, did you know that the average American changes their cell phone every 11 months? With billions of cell phones on the planet, the desire for new and better creates a HUGE environmental impact. Why not be content with our older and very functional cell phone version?
#6: Use statistics to tell the story
We all know how lovely it is to get a cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate in a convenience hot cup. There’s something so soothing about those first sips. However, convenience hot cups are really quite inconvenient for the environment.
Did you know that those hot cups are coated with plastic or wax to keep the contents warm and to prevent the cup from getting soggy? The coating on the cup makes it take 20-30 years to decompose. AND…those plastic lids are difficult and often impossible to recycle.
Here’s a shocking fact: the average amount of use time for a hot cup is 15 minutes. 50+ billion hot cups end up in landfills each year! Placed end to end, these cups would reach to the moon and back many times! And all this for 15 minutes of convenience! How do you help solve this issue? Bring your own cup! That’s it! Yes, you’ll have to wash it out each day, but that simple action could significantly reduce your environmental impact.
Create a display in your classroom of hot cups, noting the materials it takes to make them. Perhaps make a graph using the cups as counters. Note what 20 to 30 years means. What happened 25 years ago? Someone who was there may have use a hot cup that’s still decomposing today.
Find a great printable resource here and digital & printable resource here to help you make environmental education relevant to your students. As a bonus, I’ve snuck in test prep skills (I know…so evil!!) You might like this blog post on integrating test prep skills into your daily classroom routine.
Check out this blog post on teaching close reading strategies to help students practice essential reading skills.
I’d love to hear some of your Earth Day activity ideas and how you make environmental education relevant to students.
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I remember when the first Earth Day was celebrated. How the earth has changed! I wrote a script for reading over the school PA system to remind kids that they could do some things to help the earth, too. It’s on TpT. We also used to draw and color posters on brown bags to hang around the school to celebrate Earth Day. At other times we created art with junk. That’s really fun! Kids can be so creative. Thanks for asking how other teachers celebrated Earth Day. I enjoyed sharing the memories.