Earth Day Printable Activities for Kids
Here are a few simple and fun activities to help kids observe Earth Day. There is a free coloring page, continents suncatcher craft, and felt board activity. Everything is free to download below. Hope these printables and ideas can also be useful for your home or classroom.
My kindergartener always requests coloring sheets to pass out to her class so I made the above coloring page for them. The kids colored and we discussed how they propose we can help our planet. This year, in an effort to create less waste as a family, we moved to using cloth towels instead of paper towels. We talked about the importance of recycling and reusing things as much as possible. Fortunately my daughters don’t mind wearing hand-me-downs. We also talked about giving back to the Earth by planting. This was very timely as we just visited a nursery last weekend. We are just waiting for the ground to warm up here before actually taking out our shovels. Also when creating and providing printable materials for my kids and in my shop, I try to make them have as many uses as possible. We use the back side of everything, a lot of sheet protectors, and dry erase markers often to get multiple use.
This file is best printed out onto cardstock, placed onto a 9 inch paper plate, and used as a template to trace. As it happened, we had leftover blue plates from sister’s mermaid birthday. We also had leftover packing tape from our recent move and lots of tissue paper from Christmas so there was no purchase necessary and in the spirit of Earth Day, no waste made. After tracing the outline of each continent onto each plate, we cut out the inside of each silhouette. Next we placed strips of packing tape onto our plate over the hole we had just cut out, flipped the plate over, and went to town adhering square pieces of tissue paper. My kindergartener and second grader were able to complete this with little instruction. I had to precut the plates and get them ready with tape for my preschooler and toddler, but they both enjoyed placing the tissue paper on.
We then enjoyed a wonderful visual. I am by no means a topographer. I looked at various maps and studied the globe we have at home to create these doodles. The continents are not proportional as I wanted each continent to fit nicely onto the paper plates. I also realize that many of the continents are not disconnected and completely surrounded by water but kept each continent doodle separate to keep this activity simple. My goal was to help my kids understand that there are seven continents on our planet Earth and I wanted them to be able to familiarize themselves with the names of the seven continents, their basic shape, and location. We hung them up on our large window and talked about which continents were in the Northern Hemisphere and which were in the Southern Hemisphere and how Africa, Asia, and South America actually had land in both hemispheres. We also discussed how the Isthmus of Panama connects North and South America, how Europe borders Asia, and how the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt connects Asia and Africa. Antartica is not pictured above as little pumpkin kept peeling it off our window to play with.
I used the same template above to cut out the 7 continents using green felt scraps that I had and reusing some blue felt that we had previously used to make an under the sea felt board. My kids enjoyed using their snacks to put fish in the ocean and bears on each continent. We also used a pack of animal crackers and my kids sorted the animals, learning where they came from. This was a fun way to show them how each continent was connected. It was also a great opportunity to discuss all the island states and countries that were not included in my very basic doodle template. We used green mini marshmallows that we had to represent Hawaii, the islands in the Caribbean Sea, as well as the islands of Asia like Japan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, The Maldives, Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor, Taiwan, and Borneo. We also talked about the island country of Madagascar and Tasmania as well as the island countries of Europe (Iceland, UK, Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus). Unfortunately I did not get a very good picture of that as each “island” was quickly gobbled up almost as soon as they were placed and discussed.
We used this recipe to bake some chocolate cupcakes. We frosted some blue and added goldfish crackers and rainbows. We frosted some green and added mini gummy worms as well as cookie straws and cotton candy to create Truffula trees.
In the spirit of Earth Day, I plan to revisit and reuse this activity, perhaps using leftover blue plastic easter eggs to discuss the location of different mountains.
You may also be interested in:
More Free Coloring Pages for Earth Day
More Space Themed Coloring Pages
Geography Birthday Coloring Pages
I create more printable activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.
If your child or classroom uses these printables, I would love to see it! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.
I hope this post helps you to observe Earth Day with your kids!
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