Earth Day Crafts

It’s good to make our children aware of Earth Day, it’s importance and how we can make a difference. However, it’s hard for young children to understand so one way we can communicate about it is through the crafts. Renata from Keeping The Me in Mommy is sharing two wonderful Earth Day crafts we can do with our kids.

Earth day crafts 2

April 22nd is Earth day. My son was born on Earth day so it’s a double celebration in our house. This year, he will be three. I also have a daughter who is one. Being so young, it is hard for them to understand the concept of Earth on a grand scale but it is never too early to start sharing some ideas of little ways to love the Earth’s inhabitants. Birds have been a recent fascination for both my kids so I thought we’d try something with them in mind.

Reflective Feathered Friends

Windows are everywhere. While we love them for the light they allow into our indoor lives, they can be hazardous to our feathered friends. To protect birds from window concussions, we made some recycled reflectors to shine and deter birds.

Materials:

Reflector materials
– an old CD
– tin foil
– glue
– orange construction paper
– two black pipe cleaners
– two googly eyes
– feathers
– a Sharpe
– string

What to do:

1. Cover the coloured side of the CD with glue and tin foil (shiny side up). Once dried, carefully rip or cut foil to fit the edges of the CD.

Reflector steps

2. For the beak, cut out a bow shaped piece of orange. Fold it over the edge of the CD to make the beak. Draw a line down the middle of the beak with a Sharpe.

3. For each leg, tie a pipe cleaner through the middle hole and twist the bottoms to make feet.

Reflector 5

4. To finish up, add a googly eye on either side, decorate randomly with feathers, and your reflective, recycled window bird is done! Loop string through the hole to hang your bird in your window and watch it sparkle in the sun.

Reflective Feathered Friend

 

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Pinecone Bird Feeder

As a follow up to this activity and continuing with the bird theme, this bird feeder is a classic and functional toddler-friendly craft.

Materials:

Bird feeder materials
– pinecones
– nut butter
– bird seed
-yarn.

What to do:
1. Spread nut butter onto a pinecone with a plastic knife or mini spread knife.

2. Pour a bit of bird seed onto a plate. Roll the pinecone in the bird seed.

3. Tie a length of yarn to the top spoke of the pinecone. Hang it from a tree!

Earthday Birdfeeder Craft

 


Earth Day Book Bonus:

The teacher in me loves reinforcing concepts with books. However, finding books that are appropriate for toddlers and preschoolers on topics such as Earth Day can be tricky. Here are a couple I found:

the-earth-book-11

1. The Earth Book by Todd Parr
This book has cute pictures and simple text. It suggests Earth friendly actions and explains why they are good ideas. For example, one suggestion is using both sides of paper and bringing bags when shopping “because I love the trees and I want owls to have a place to live.”

 

 

2. What do you know about Earth? by Carmen Bredeson.
This is a non-fiction book that answers questions such as “What is the Earth made of?” and “Why is water important to Earth?”

3. Earth Friends Series (at School, at Grocery Store, at Home, at Play) by Francine Galko.

This series is geared toward a bit of an older audience. I paraphrased the messages and it gave us a chance to discuss topics like “Buy Things that Last”, “What is an Earth Friend?”, and “Using Less Paper”.

 

Renata is the imperfect mother of two attempting to keep her craft on and have some “me time” while on this wonderful road of motherhood. While she loves the roles of mommy and wife, she also loved her pre-mommy me and wants to keep some of that artistic, multi-interested girl around as well. With the busy-ness of being a parent though, it is sometimes hard to do. Her blog, Keeping The Me In Mommy, is a record of her attempts at creativity amidst the (mis)adventures of parenthood.

7 thoughts on “Earth Day Crafts

  1. I love these! I only found out about Earth Day from Google’s daily doodle, and wrote my own article about it, so was happy to see someone else also writing about it – great ideas here!
    cheers,
    Gordon

  2. Love those Earth Day craft ideas. The kids usually bring something home from school to do to honor Earth Day, but haven’t seen anything yet this year.

  3. I love the bird feeder idea (well, I like all of your ideas to be honest) and think this is a great way to incorporate Earth day into the lives o your children!

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