Grade: Elementary

#404. Earth Day

Reading/Writing, level: Elementary
Posted Sun Apr 19 15:11:51 PDT 1998 by Sandy/K/Mo (angel893@aol.com).
St. Francis Xavier, Missouri
Materials Required: varies
Activity Time: varies
Concepts Taught: Earth day activities

Dear Earth of Mine By Rebecca Kai Dotlich
I'd like to scrub you fresh and clean,
with soap and sponges till you gleam again,
just like you first began, free of tar and old tin cans.
I'd like to see you strong and mended, perfect like
you were intended.
Cobbled new, I'd rescue you, and rinse you clean,
and make you green again.

Earth friendly Music..
Going with the theme of reuse, recycle & reduce come up with ideas to be used in these songs.
Tune Mary had a Little Lamb
Recycled...
Soup cans can be recycled, recycled, recycled.
Soup cans can be recycled,
So put them in the blue bin.

Can't reuse
We can't reuse paper towels, paper towels, paper towels,
We can't reuse paper towels
So use cloth ones instead.

Tune.. Twinkle twinkle Little Star
We use paper every day: this is what we have to say:
________
_______
_____ (students fill in these lines about ways to save paper)
By saving paper, we save trees.

Art ideas
Make a message t shirt
Make a Junk a saurus
I love nature mobile
There are several books with art ideas from recycled materials.

Games
Have the students make an interlocking set of cards.. make a frown face on the one half and draw an unfriendly act and on the other make a smile face and put a friendly act. Mix up the pieces and have the children match them.. This could be a project and older class does for the younger students too.

We are going to try to make a garden from an avocado seed, sweet potato, and the top of a pineapple.

We always have an Earth Day Mass at school with different activities, we have tried to have butterflies to release but the first year they came to late, this year to early so next year should be on time.
The State Highway Dept. has a person that will come out and do a program on plantings, recycling as does the State Conservation Dept. and Natural Resource Dept..

Hope this is of some interest.
Sandy/K/Mo