Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day is a wonderful reminder to thank God for our beautiful earth and all of His many creations on it. He was well pleased when He was finished. And He is well pleased when we take care of it.

After you have thanked God for this beautiful gift, let's have some Earth Day fun! Earth Day was first  celebrated in 1970 as a day devoted to education about environmental issues. Take this opportunity as the perfect time to talk about reduce, reuse, recycle and the importance of understanding and caring for our environment.

Have a family discussion about the importance of clean water and what we can do to take care of it and reduce the amount of water we use.

To further explain the water cycle I have drawn a little diagram that may help. You may need to explain the meanings of precipitation, collection, evaporation and condensation, but your kids are bright and will understand a lot of this and it helps them understand why we need to keep our rivers and lakes and oceans clean!

                                                           

They can draw their own picture if they want.

Here's a cool experiment to do with your children that will demonstrate part of the water cycle that involves plants and trees, transpiration. When water falls or snow melts into the ground, some of that is collected by a tree's roots so the tree can use it. From there, the water travels to the leaves where the extra comes out small holes in the bottoms of the leaves. For this experiment, all you need is a baggie, a rubber band, and a tree or bush. Using the rubber band, secure the baggie onto the end of a branch with leaves. Leave it for at least 24 hours and then check for water droplets in the baggie.                    And there you will have transpiration you can actually see!

                               
 Clean baggie secured to a branch.       Water droplets inside - transpiration

One last activity you can do that has to do with our water and land is to go on a hunt in your yard and neighborhood and look for signs of erosion.....water wearing away the earth. Talk about how plants and grass and rocks can prevent that from happening and allow the water to seep into the ground.

One more good Earth Day lesson is the importance of the world's rainforests. National Geographic Kids has a wonderful list of Rainforest Facts.


More Earth Day activities:

A fascinating and creative way to recycle your old broken crayons is to melt them into new shapes or even in muffin tins. Melting Crayons makes the old new again and in a beautiful way.

Make art with what otherwise may be trash... reuse cardboard rolls, egg cartons, used wrapping paper, ribbons and yarn, plastic silverware, used containers, magazines and newspapers and the list goes on and on. Really, all you need is some glue or paste, paint or crayons, scissors to put items together to make sculptures, flat pictures, a hat, whatever your imagination can dream up!

Here are some more activities for an up cycled craft and Earth Day coloring sheet and Facebook links for their live craft sessions and doodle alongs at Crayola Activities.