It is important to make children aware of the importance of environmental issues and a very good way to achieve this is through concrete activities that they can participate in. An art activity can be an opportunity for a relaxed discussion and learning will often be more effective in this way because the children are captivated by the object that they are creating. And that doesn’t apply only to art activities but also to other projects like recipes.

Here are two fun activities for Earth Day that are free and sure to be a success with your child or your students.

Make your own globe is a free Animaplates project that is also featured in a video. You learn a lot about the Earth when you are making a scale model of it. You study the shape of the continents and you realize that oceans cover a very big part of the surface.  It truly is a “blue planet”.

“Earth pudding” is a delicious and fun to make recipe. After eating this dessert, you can wash the cups and reuse them to plant real seeds and observe how they grow.

P.S. Did you know that the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, and that it was inspired by an environmental catastrophe (a well blowout off the coast of California, almost as bad as the Deep Water Horizon accident in 2010)? From the beginning, Earth Day was intended as an educational activity, and that seems just as necessary today…