Earth Day Activities to do with the Family
Today is officially Earth Day (22nd April 2021). Since 1970 Earth Day has been on a mission to educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide to drive positive action to protect our precious planet.
Earth Day is always a special day for the team at Natural Baby Shower. Whilst, every day we work hard to offer our customers planet friendly parenting alternatives and work to ensure we are operating in the most sustainable way we can, Earth Day gives us an opportunity to share this message and support such an important mission.
This year, Earth Day is all focused around restoring our earth and we believe what better place to start than to get our little ones passionate and excited about helping to protect the planet too. The littlest of people can make the biggest difference.
So the NBS team have put all our heads together and come up with lots of fun but educational ways you can get your little one’s excited about caring for our precious planet.
Make story time inspirational
Do they always request the same bedtime story? Switch it up by picking a book written to inspire and educate your little one in a fun and engaging way. We have a whole range of books ranging from children’s storybooks about inspirational figures and famous activists, to important educational books about the planet and oceans. Some of our top Earth Day picks are;
- "Fantastically Great Women Who Saved The Planet" by Kate Pankhurst explores trail-blazing women who were making decisions that helped protect our natural world.
- "The Tale of a Toothbrush" by M.G. Leonard is a picture book that explores the story of plastic in our oceans in a child friendly way.
- "Little Turtle Turns the Tide" by Lauren Davies and Nico Williams follows the journey of Little Turtle as he discovers the plastic problem and how to make a difference with the help of his friends and the world’s children.
- Little People, Big Dreams: "David Attenborough" book introduces little ones to the life of the national treasure that is David Attenborough.
- "Recycling" Book by Lorna Freytag encourages little ones to find out why recycling matters and about different ways of re-using and recycling things.
These are just a few of our favourites. Explore our full book collection here.
Nature self portrait
What better way to celebrate nature than to make art out of it! Encourage their imagination to run wild with a little help from nature by getting your little ones to create some art out of wonderful nature. It could be a self portrait, a family portrait or simply a collage of brilliant creativity. Go out on the hunt in the garden or your local park to gather together as many interesting leaves, sticks and petals then let the art begin! You will need some paper and glue for this, plus you could get them started by drawing the outline of the face for them to decorate. Below are some of our favourite ideas to get your creative mind flowing.
Get them interested in gardening
Getting your children into gardening can be an extremely rewarding and beneficial pastime. It not only get’s them outside and exploring, it can also help teach them the life cycle of food, plants and nature in general. Teaching your children where products and food comes from is a great life lesson. Their respect for the world around them will grow, hopefully resulting in a lifelong love for the planet.
To make it fun for them incorporate some games into it. A mud kitchen always goes down a treat with our little ones, or pick up some easy to grow seeds such as mint, watercress or a sunflower and encourage them to care and watch their products grow.
Get them their own mini gardening tools to encourage them to get their hands messy and grow some amazing things in the garden with you.
Our favourites are;
This Liewood beach and garden set is made from 100% silicone making it not only eco friendly, but safe for children to use as it’s got no sharp edges. The set includes a watering can, shovel and rake, bucket and animal moulds, everything your little one needs to start their gardening adventure.
Or the Plan Toys gardening set which is designed specifically to fit into tiny hands, and made of water-friendly PlanWood so children can play realistically outside and build a garden of their own. The set includes a trowel, flower pot, gardening fork and watering can.
Discover how seeds grow
Watching seeds grow is an amazing science lesson for kids. This seed growing experiment gives kids the opportunity to see up close how a seed grows what would actually be happening under the ground before they typically sprout from the earth. They will love checking on their little seeds progress each day! It’s truly amazing to watch how a seed grows and using a mason jar gives you a front row seat for observing it all!
You will need;
Paper Towels
Water
Seeds (Pea and bean seeds grow quickly)
Large jar
Fill the jar with paper towels. Kids can fold them and push them down into the jar. Gently water your seed jar to wet the paper towels, but be careful not to flood it. Carefully push seeds down into the paper towels around the edge of the jar so they can still be seen. Make sure they are firmly held in place. And sit back and watch them grow!
Encourage them to reduce waste
We all know that humans generate a huge amount of waste from our day to day lives. Whether that be packaging, containers, food waste or general rubbish, it certainly mounts up. Reducing our own household waste can go a long way in helping the global issue. We all know little ones keep focussed and are much more enthusiastic when they are having fun and playing. So how can we talk to them about waste, food waste in particular, in a fun way?
Well let’s talk about Plan Toys wonky veg set. The great thing about the wonky fruit and veg set from Plan Toys, is it teaches children that sometimes things grow a little wonky and bumpy, but they are still just as yummy! Teaching them to look past appearances of fruit and veg will help reduce food waste. But that’s not all! Play Toys have partnered with Kromohommer, a dutch social enterprise, to help educate families and children about the high levels of food waste generated around the world. For every Wonky Fruit & Veg Set purchased, Plant Toys will donate £1 to Kromkommer to help support their activities around food waste.
Earth Day lollies
What better way to celebrate earth day than with a little sweet treat. These easy to make DIY lollies are a complete crowd pleaser that the whole family can enjoy, plus they look really cool.
Ingredients:
1 (12 hole) lollipop mould
15-18 blue boiled sweets - crushed
10-12 green boiled sweet - crushed
Hammer/rolling pin
2 large Ziploc bag
12 lollipop sticks
Preheat oven to 275°.
Place each colour sweet into separate plastic bags and hammer into small pieces. Place 3 groups of green candy into each mould (representing continents) and fill in the rest of the moulds with blue candy.
Bake for 10 minutes or until the candy is completely melted. Remove from oven and insert lollipop sticks into the melted candy. Allow to cool for 20 minutes. Gently pop the lollipops out of their moulds and enjoy!
Show them how amazing the planet is
Get outdoors! It may sound obvious, but take your little ones on exciting adventures into forests, nature parks or beaches and let them explore. As you walk, point out the amazing things you see such as interesting shells, animals or pretty flowers and leaves to show them how incredible nature is.
If you find that your kids aren’t involved in their surroundings, turn your adventures into games. You could create a fun game of I-spy or nature bingo as you walk and whoever spots the most things first wins! We have a few fun templates to get you started;
Earth Day activity pack
This one is for when you are wanting a moment of peace and to encourage your little ones to learn independently about the environment. We have pulled together a creative, interactive and educational Earth Day activity pack full of fun crafty games and tasks for your little one to get stuck into to help them learn about caring for the planet. Get yours here.
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