Free Earth Day Pack for Toddlers & PreK

 

Celebrate Earth Day with your toddlers and preschoolers with this fun set of 16 printable activities featuring letter sounds, pre-writing, word tracing, puzzles, do-a-dot, lacing, counting, number recognition, patterns, visual discrimination matching, and more! Teach your child about Earth Day and recycling with this pack and also with the Free Sorting Recyclables activity!
 

Download your Free Earth Day Pack Here!

Sorting Recyclables Free Printable

 

Sorting is one of our favorite activities at our house! And it is so beneficial for young children. Sorting builds logic, observation and math skills, to name just a few. I am going to write more about the importance of sorting in a different post, but for today I wanted to share with you an Earth Day sorting activity that you can do to start teaching your kids about recycling!

 

Instead of categorizing the recyclables by material, ie. plastic, glass, metal, etc, I felt it would be simpler for a young child to understand recycling in terms of everyday objects that they are already familiar with: bottles, paper, cans & boxes. They will begin to see these items as things that can be recycled.

 

This activity comes with 2 levels of difficulty. For beginners, the items to be sorted are all the same as the sample picture, and the child sorts by matching. For more advanced or older kids, the items in each category are different and the child has to first determine what each item is and then what category it belongs in.

 

I recommend that you laminate and use Velcro for this activity. However, this can also be done using 4 baskets or containers and the child sorts the pictures into the correct container.

 

Download your Free Printable Recycling Sorting Activity!

 

DIY Recycled Raisin Box Puzzle

 

You know those little raisin boxes that kids love to hold and eat out of? Instead of throwing them away, let's reuse them and turn them into puzzles! I created a cute 12 piece farm puzzle that you can use. All you need is 12 raisin boxes, scissors and glue. This is a great project for Earth Day or for any day!

 

 You can use any brand of raisins, the standard size boxes, which are either 1 oz or 1 1/2 oz. They are the same size in length and width, just different thickness.

 

 

This is the brand I used, but like I said, you can use any brand, for example those red Sun Maid boxes are fine.

 

 

Once you have 12 boxes you can just print and cut the puzzle and glue each piece to the boxes.

 

 

And that's it! Wasn't that easy? Now if you want, you could use Velcro on the sides of the boxes to hold it together as your child completes the puzzle, but it's not necessary at all.

 

As an eco-friendly alternative to the free printable, you could find a picture in a magazine or newspaper and use that for the puzzle!

 

Download your Raisin Box Puzzle Here

Egg Carton Recycled Easter Crafts

After you boil all your Easter eggs what do you do with the egg carton? The possibilities are endless! I am going to show you a few ideas for recycled and eco-friendly Easter crafts, including a flower, a bunny rabbit, a cat, and a caterpillar.

Flower

Cut out one of the cups from the egg carton. Every egg carton has a slightly different shape but you should get a flower-like shape after cutting. You may have to cut it a bit more to form the petals.

Use a sharp instrument to poke two holes at the bottom of the flower. Then you will thread a chenille stem through one hole and back out the other hole.

Twist the two ends together to form the stem.

My daughter painted the flower and glued a pom pom in the middle. This is the finished product:

Caterpillar

Cut the egg carton down the middle lengthwise to make this caterpillar. You can add more cups to make it longer. Let your kids have fun painting and decorating it!

Cat

For the cat you will need two cups - one for the head and one for the body/legs. Make sure to cut the legs to be the same length otherwise it won't stand.

For the head you use another cup and you may have to cut and shape the ears.

Glue or staple the head and legs together.

Let your child paint the cat, add eyes, whiskers, tail, and any other accessories.

Rabbit

The rabbit is the same as the cat except the ears are longer.

Paint it, add eyes, whiskers, a pom pom tail and anything else your child wants!