11 LAST MINUTE EARTH DAY ACTIVITIES

If you forgot that Earth Day is Saturday...I have several simple activities that you can still easily pull off with your students! And since it falls on Saturday, a no-school day, you can get away will celebrating it next week if you need to!

Here are some easy, quick, and fun Earth Day activities that I do with my students. 

Every year my class plants flowers to beautify the school. With these long window planters from Walmart planting is super easy and requires no digging or preparing a flower bed. The flowers are also super cheap at Walmart and my students absolutely LOVE planting. Each week we have an assigned "Gardener" that is responsible for watering and pruning our flowers. 

Place a recycle can in your classroom. Teach your students to recycle all year long with a classroom recycle bin. You can still pull this off by printing a recycle symbol from google and attaching it to a trashcan in your classroom. Gather some household items before school and start a lesson today on recycling with your students!

Gather some trash bags from the custodian and some gloves and have your students pick up trash around the school. Afterwards, use the trash they collected to sort the trash into the appropriate cans in your classroom that you created above. 

We have planted 4 trees at my school over the years. We lost one, but are still proud to have 3 of the four growing strong. 

 We planted both of these trees.

And this is our lemon tree (bush) haha! Our gardener doesn't do a very good job of grooming them, but this baby just produced her first batch of lemons this year and that was very exciting for the kids. We made our own lemonade!

We love walking by them and watching them grow each year.

 We will be visiting our landfill for the first time this year! This is going to be a great experience for my students. I was really hoping to do it prior to Earth Day and this post, but it didn't work out. I will share our visit next month.

We started a worm farm last month and have been learning about how worms take care of our earth. We will be releasing them tomorrow to help our earth. 

Spice up your Earth Day with a little cooking by making these easy Earth Day Cupcakes. 

This recipe is from my "Cook to Learn" Unit, but I've made it available for you to download for FREE here for Earth Day! 

Take a twist on Rice Krispie Treats and make Edible Earth Day Balls.

This recipe is also from my "Cook to Learn" Unit, but you can get it as an exclusive Earth Day FREEBIE here. 

 If you're looking for a fun, last minute craft, last year we made coffee filter earths for Earth Day. They're super simple, cheap, and fun and you can get the directions here. 

This is an alternative to this craft project and a great opportunity to get some motor skill practice in. Students just cut and paste small pieces of construction paper to make their earth. Check out the tutorial here.

This year we are making these paper mache earths for the first time. You can find the tutorial I'm using here. 

I saved the best for last...and while this isn't a "last minute" activity, and it's a little late for you to do this year, I have to share, because you will DEFINITELY want to put this on the lesson plans for for next year! 

This is the best Earth Day activity EVER from The Brown Bag Teacher!

We filled this pumpkin up with biodegradable and non-biodegradable items and buried it in October. We dug it up in April for Earth Day and this is literally all that was left. 

 Our food and pumpkin had completely vanished, but our garbage was still there! This was such a meaningful lesson for my students about what our garbage can do to the earth! And the "Woahs," "Oooohhs," and "Ahhhhs" are priceless!

I hope these activities will ease your Earth Day planning even if it is last minute!! 

I'd love to hear about your exciting Earth Day projects too! What is your favorite Earth Day activity?