Earth Day Activities & Books for Kids
How to Discuss Earth Day & Environmental Issues with Kids
We celebrate Earth Day every year with discussions, as well as multiple sensory and book play setups during the month of April, but more importantly, we read books on environmental issues all year round.
I’ve always enjoyed books but since becoming a mom, I’ve discovered my love for kids books. I’m not an educator, but I started researching books and building our collection when my first son was born. Since then I’ve always turned to books on every topic to help me explain things better and also for us to imagine together.
Earth Day Themed Books
After five years of collecting books, we now have quite a big collection of kids books, and our Earth Day themed books are some of my favourites. One of our first earth-related books was a simple board book called Good Morning World, I Love You So. It may not be viewed as an Earth Day book by many, but it’s a book about gratitude. Pointing out all the little or big things the World offers that we should be thankful for, I’ve considered it as both a love-themed and an earth-themed book. It’s perfect for a baby or a one year old. Having said that, both my boys still enjoy reading it at two and five years old. We keep it in my little one’s room and usually read it in the mornings before we start our day as it has such a positive message.
Change Starts with Us by Sophie Beer is another great board book for young toddlers. It’s the perfect book to start having conversations about the ways we can all make a change at a young age.
Our very first book regarding an environmental issue was Penguins Don’t Wear Sweaters by Marikka Tamura (from Amazon)* We got it when my oldest was three and to my surprise he was very interested in it, asking lots of questions and talking about how he wanted to help the penguins impacted by oil spills. Now two years later, we still read it often and discuss this issue.
Book Play – Earth Day Activities
We recently set up a sensory bin, where we had an ocean with icebergs (coloured water with big pieces of ice) and full of happy, playful penguins (we have 10 mini penguins) That was until a big ship came nearby and caused a massive oil spill. We poured a little vegetable oil in our tray, which changed the life in the ocean. We got the penguins out, gave them a bath, made sweaters (out of an old glove) for them as they were getting cold, and also tried to clean up the oil, which unfortunately wasn’t entirely possible.
We also set up a dry sensory play where we cleaned up a beach. Inspired by the book, What a Waste by Jess French, for this sensory bin, I used natural chickpeas (beach) and blue dyed rice (ocean). I put in a bunch of mini ocean animal figurines that my boys love (Safari Ltd good luck minis). Then I added some garbage (plastic, paper, a toy tire, miniature soda bottles, etc.) and asked my boys to help clean up and also sort trash and recycling into separate bins.
Although my five year old told me I should have used water and sand to make it look like a real beach (“water and sand would have been ideal for this play” in his exact words), he ended up playing with it for a long time with his little brother. The next day they brought in our Schleich polar bears and came up with a rescue mission for the polar bears on their own, which I loved watching.
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