From composting to making nature art, every kid will enjoy celebrating Earth Day with these fun and eco-friendly activities.
This year, the wonderful Earth Day holiday will be observed on Monday, Apr 22, 2024. This year’s theme is “Planet vs. Plastics,” to spread awareness about the dangers of plastic to both human and environmental health, as well as advocating to stop all single use plastics and demand an end to fast fashion.
While the moms at Young Eden believe that Earth Day should be celebrated every day of the year, the month of April is a great opportunity to practice being kind to our planet and teaching our children about the importance of living in balance with our environment.
Children have an instinctive connection to nature that is easy to encourage with time spent playing outdoors. Research shows that exposure to nature can even reduce children’s stress levels by as much as 28 percent, while spending just 20 minutes walking outside has been found to help kids concentrate better.
Those aren’t the only benefits.
Your child’s connection with nature promotes stewardship of the environment, emotional and social intelligence, and even cognitive development. Engaging with nature, for instance, helps encourage children's innate creativity, curiosity, and problem-solving abilities. Activities that involve the natural world enhance critical thinking, observation, and exploration skills. Studies show that being in natural environments may also improve academic achievement, within science and math in particular.
Additionally, children who play outside are more likely to interact with others and cooperate, which helps them develop critical social skills like empathy, communication, and teamwork. Activities that take place in nature promote collaboration and shared experiences, both of which help people develop their emotional intelligence.
Finally, kids that regularly interact with nature are more likely to exhibit behaviors that support environmental conservation and to have a lifelong appreciation for the environment–which is critical for raising future generations to adopt more sustainable lifestyles.
Having reviewed all of the benefits of nature for children, here is our list of fun Earth Day 2024 activities to enjoy and educate your child about how nature operates. We hope that these activities are helpful to give your child a deeper meaning for Earth Day, and help them develop a lifelong sense of environmental responsibility.
Earth Day 2024 Activities for Kids
Environmental Education
With children, read books or watch documentaries about environmental issues to help them understand the problems facing the planet and the significance of conservation efforts.
Scavenger Hunt on Hiking Trails
Taking a walk or hike through your favorite local mountain, park, or lake trail can be infinitely more educational and fun for your child if you incorporate a scavenger hunt along the way. You can easily write up your own, print out a free list of items to search, or pick up a fun pack of cards with illustrations.
Outdoor Clean Up & Trash Pick Up
Spend an hour at a local beach, park, or mountain with the intention of picking up litter and trash. Invite friends and family to participate, and gamify your clean up by teaching your kiddo to sort what you find at the end into piles of compostable, recyclable, re-usable, and trash piles.
Plant Seeds in a Garden
Plants and flowers absorb carbon emissions that are warming the planet, so planting seeds is always a helpful and fun activity for kids to learn about gardening. You can pick up seeds at your local flower shop if you don’t have them. For the entire month of April, Young Eden is even giving away free flower seed packets you can claim and plant with your child.
Plant a Tree
Planting a tree is even more impactful to the environment, as trees absorb even more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than plants and flowers, offsetting the global carbon emissions warming the planet. If you can’t plant a tree yourself, try to support an organization that does. For example, for every item purchased at Young Eden, one tree is planted to absorb and offset carbon emissions.
Practice Composting
Teach your child how to compost by turning scraps of food you aren't going to eat anymore, along with dead leaves and plants, into healthy soil for your garden. Have them create their own small pile of compost, put it into a clear jar, add a cup of water, and watch it progress over time. Explain how microorganisms help break down the organic material and turn it into compost that helps more food grow again in the garden with natural and renewable growth.
Go on a Bug Hunt
Children have a ton of fun with bugs, and a bug hunt is a great way to introduce them to all of the variety of species and organisms that help our ecosystem thrive. Head into your backyard or a local garden to search for bees, earthworms, and other leaf crawlers and have a talk about their importance to our food chain.
Upcycling Projects
Try out upcycling projects to transform waste materials into functional products. For instance, you could use recycled materials to create bird feeders or upcycle old t-shirts into reusable shopping bags.
Create Nature Art
Encourage kids to use organic materials like leaves, flowers, and rocks to create artwork that is influenced by the natural world. This could involve painting rocks, creating nature collages, or rubbing leaves.
Earth Day Pledges
Encourage kids to make promises to lessen their impact on the environment, like taking shorter baths, shutting off lights when not in use, or composting food scraps to cut down on waste.
Outdoor Play
Ask kids to promise to do things like turn off lights when not in use, use less water when taking a bath, or compost their waste to lessen their impact on the environment.
FAQ
What is Earth Day?
Earth Day is an annual event to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by Earthday.org including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.
When is Earth Day 2024?
Earth Day 2024 is celebrated on Monday, April 22, 2024.
The official theme for 2024 is "Planet vs. Plastics.