GRISWOLDDAD
Parenting, Entertainment, and Travel Tips
Earth Day Crafts and Activities
In your best “movie guy voice,” read the next sentence:
In a world of climate change, melting ice caps, over-foresting, urban sprawl…and any other scary term that means the Earth needs humans to help it rather than take it for granted, it is more important than ever to recognize Earth Day.
We want our planet to last long after we’re gone, for our kids’ kids’ kids. So, what better way to understand Earth, how it works, and how we can be good stewards for it than by celebrating a day devoted to the planet itself?
For the kids, to really get them into the day, that could mean doing crafts. Now, Earth Day crafts generally are crafts that look like … Earth. So, while that doesn’t leave a lot of variety for the content of your craft, you can get creative and form your Earth many different ways.
Here are 5 such ways -
Crayon Earth
What’s a good lesson to teach for Earth Day? Recycling! So, grab your old broken blue and green crayons and recycle them into something new. Put the broken blue and green crayon bits into a section of a muffin pan and bake them for a few minutes until fully melted. Remove them from the oven. Once the melted parts cool off and solidify, flip the muffin pan, and dump out of your new “Earth Crayon”.
Earth Hand
What Earth day theme does this one show? It shows that you’ve got a hand in taking care of the Earth of course!
Get another paper plate, paint your oceans and continents (leaving the center of your Earth as just ocean, for now). Once that dries enough, paint your kid’s hand green and let them press a handprint directly in the center. The hand is a continent! Now you have a craft AND a keepsake.
Painted Earth Rock
Our Earth Day theme this time? USING the Earth to make a craft. Find a roundish rock and paint it to look like Earth. After all…Earth rocks!
Holding Earth
This one continues the theme that you have a hand in taking care of the Earth and being a good steward of nature.
Get a paper plate. Color it to look like Earth. Cut a red heart out of construction paper and glue it to the center of the plate. Then trace your kid’s hands in another piece of construction paper and glue those to the plate as if they’re holding the Earth.
Paper Plate Earth
This paper plate Earth craft, which anthropomorphizes Earth, is a great way of showing your children that the Earth is a living thing. Living things need to be taken care of so they keep living, right?
Color or paint a paper plate to look like the earth. Unless you’re gluing googly eyes onto the plate as your eyes, you’ll want to draw in your eyes and mouth so you don’t color or paint over the spots where you’re going to put them. Once done with your oceans and continents, finish adding the face. Next, cut strips of blue or green construction paper, accordion them up by folding them over and over. Glue these to the plate as your planet’s arms and legs.
Our Earth plate guy looks a bit angry with his red eyes. I asked the son that colored those, “why red, is he mad?” He said, “he’s not mad, his eyes are red because they’re made out of lava.”