8 Days 'Til the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day: Eco-Friendly Activities for Your Students!

The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed everyone's lives, especially for teachers and students. Schools across the country have closed to ensure social distancing and safety. This can be a difficult transition and may cause some anxiety for you and your students. If you need some fun ideas, here are a couple eco-friendly activities that your students will enjoy! These can work for any grade level K-12.

The Earth Challenge

Earthday.org is getting ready for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, which is also going digital for the first time. To get everyone to celebrate, they created the Earth Challenge 2020 app. This app allows anyone to become a citizen scientist by collecting air pollution and garbage pollution near their home. This teaches students to be more aware of the environment and learn about taking global action. It is very simple to use, but please ensure safety and caution for the little ones when going outdoors doing their part as a citizen scientist! Learn more about the app here.

Plastic Pollution Plan

Do an activity with your students telling them to audit their plastic use at home. Let them organize and count how many plastic bottles, plastic bags, straws, and wrappers they have. Then, they can research products that have more sustainable packaging or find ways on how they can use less packaging. Ask what they can do in their daily life to use less plastic.

Sustainable Art

Arts and crafts are always fun for kids and a perfect activity for being indoors. Teach your students to solve environmental problems using the arts. They can search for materials around their house and repurpose them to create jewelry, sculptures, bags, storage cases, or accessories.

You can also have them do a project based on the DooDad competition. This contest required students to use plastic bags and wrappers to create a sculpture that addresses an environmental problem. Read more about this here. For more inspiration, visit our sustainable arts resource page for project and lesson ideas.

Reflect on Films/Documentaries

You can have your students watch movies and videos on sustainable topics, and let them share what they think about them. They can pick out a scene from the film and then discuss why it's meaningful to them in terms of taking global action. We have lesson ideas based on movies like Frozen and Toy Story, so make sure to check those out! If you are an elementary teacher, we have a list of some of the best sustainable education videos here.