Activities for Grades K-6
Now, more than ever, your students will benefit from feeling the deep connection between themselves, the Earth, and all forms of life on it. After a rough, isolating period, empower kids to make choices that help the planet that we live on. Below are some of our favorite educational activities from around the web. Click the pix to learn more!
Visit an animal sanctuary.
Visit an animal sanctuary. Many animal sanctuaries are allowing private tours for small groups at this time—us included! Visiting a sanctuary students to see animals as individuals, which makes it a bit more difficult to see them as food. Learning about their personal stories and the fates they escaped inspires empathy and covers many social-emotional learning standards. Combine your outing with a challenge to go vegan for a day, a week, or a lifetime. After your visits, kids can make an informative poster explaining why veganism combats climate change, deforestation, and food insecurity. Can’t visit a sanctuary? That’s okay—why not sponsor a rescued animal? Let everyone vote on YOUR animal. You’ll get updates and feel good about the difference you’re making in someone’s life.
Bring Earth to life.
Bring
life to Earth.
Plant some seeds. Students love to get dirty. Kids (of all ages) find digging in cool dirt calming, and find satisfaction in watching their seeds sprout to life. If you have a school or community garden in which to transplant the plants once they start growing, even better. A garden is a long-term commitment that teaches students responsibility and the pride in a job well done over time.
You can plant vegetables that students can eat, native flowers, or a pollinator pathway garden. Bonus for the last choice: The bees, hummingbirds, butterflies and other pollinators that visit provide a whole new lesson in life cycles, migration, and ecology.
Recycle trash into art.
Make a bottle cap mural. Making art from trash is incredibly empowering to students: they’re practicing good citizenship by cleaning the Earth, and creating something beautiful and tangible through their ideas and physical efforts. Bottle cap murals allow you to teach sorting to the littles, and the use of power tools (supervised, please) to students in upper grades. Have your students collect the caps for a bonus: kids are shocked by the amount of garbage these unrecyclable caps take up. Start small if you don’t have a lot of time! Or…go big and make this a school-wide project if you do.
Art can be made from all sorts of “trash”. Show kids some well-known works made from discarded items. If you focus on plastic items, you can work in a lesson the dangers of plastic in the environment, and how plastic is hurting the Earth. The statistics are terrifying.
Veganize it.
Host a classroom cook-off. Challenge students to research a non-vegan recipe on their own, and then…veganize it! Invite students to bring their best vegan creations in, keeping allergens in mind. Many people are under the impression that vegan food is all salads. Far from it. (Did you know Oreos are vegan? True fact!) If bringing in food is not allowed, consider working as a class to choose a menu, and competing with another class’s menu! Cooking creates opportunities to cover math and SEL standards. Students can choose a breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, or dessert. Use this opportunity to explain how vegan food is related to environmentalism.
Become citizen scientists.
Become a scientist. There are so many trackers that allow students to collect helpful data about our planet, animals, insects, and more. Students will work alongside other global citizens who share the goal of caring for our planet. The Scistarter website allows you to search for a project just right for your class to take part in together. ISeeChange, for example, encourages users to submit photos of their local environment, where scientists will use the data to analyze climate change.
Create a nature-themed poetry anthology.
Write poems about nature. Begin by bringing students into nature, or showing them images from nature and encouraging them to use their five senses to describe the scenes. You can also share nature poems with kids such as this one, this one, or this one. Instruct students to write about the importance of protecting nature. Students can write acrostics, haiku, or free-verse for the more advanced. Encourage them to research a photo that accompanies their poem, or create a piece of art to correlate to their poem. Once everyone has submitted their poem, publish it in a volume online, or print it on paper.
Be good citizens.
Organize a school-wide volunteer activity. Or, start small and include just your students. A clean up allows students to spend time outside, helping the Earth heal. There are so many opportunities to clean up outdoors, many of which allow you to teach your students about the UN’s 17 sustainability goals. Volunteer at a soup kitchen to teach students about food insecurities and inequality. Walk dogs at shelter. Organize a drive to collect school supplies or books for girls in countries where it’s difficult to get an education. (Tip: read Linda Sue Park’s book, A Long Walk to Water to drive home the ideas of gender, resource, and educational inequality. It’s fiction, based on a true story.) Protest the inhumane treatment of animals in our food system. Don’t be afraid to bring some attention to your event! Your students will feel proud of themselves either way… but a little validation never hurts.
Get outside.
Plan a scavenger hunt. If possible, getting kids outside and into green space is the best option here, whether that means a hike through a forest, or an outing to a park in an urban environment. A scavenger hunt can also teach students to identify objects found in nature, such as types of leaves or rocks, to reinforce classroom learning. To add a STEM component, try geocaching—scavenger hunts that require a WiFi connection and GPS. There are several online apps, many of which are free, that you can use for this. If we want our children to protect our planet, they need to be given opportunities to appreciate it.
Take a Virtual Tour.
Take a virtual tour. We offer virtual tours that teach about compassion and the role of animal agriculture in climate change—with a side of adorable thrown in. And we’re not alone. Visit the tundra and some resident polar bears with Discovery Education. Show students a biome they may never otherwise get to see with Nature’s virtual tours. Filling children with wonder and awe at their Earth is so important. Equally important is reminding them they they are connected to all this beauty.
Explore Renewable Energy.
Build a wind turbine, test solar energy, demonstrate the power of water. Explain to students the detrimental effects of our nonrenewable energy resources on climate change, and why our current model isn’t renewable—we need to find a way to rely more on renewable, clean resources.
You can also watch the film or read the book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind about William Kamkwamba, who created a windmill from scraps that ultimately saves his village from starvation.
Consider running a contest for students to create a powerful way to harness renewable energy.