Earth Day is on April 22 each year. If you’re wanting to plan some Earth Day activities for students, here are 12 great ideas for activities you can do with them, whether they’re elementary, middle school or high school students:
1. Litter Picking
Make a positive impact on your local area by going litter picking. This is not only a great team building opportunity for your young people, but can also be used as a fundraiser.
2. Earth Day Scavenger Hunt
To make the litter picking competitive, plan it as a scavenger hunt where teams race to find various items of trash. You can find a free scavenger hunt list here.
3. Posters & Flyers
If you do decide to go litter picking, try to get other people in the community involved to maximize the cleanup effort. Get your students to design some posters and flyers to advertise what they’ll be doing.
4. Tree Planting
If your church, community center or school has some land that’s not being used, have the young people plant some trees.
5. Vegetable Patch
For a project that will extend beyond Earth Day, plant a vegetable patch. Get the youth to take care of the vegetables and use them to make snacks or meals together – see our free session plan on how to teach youth meal planning for some further ideas.
6. Recycle
This can easily be tied in with the litter picking activities, as there’s a good chance that much of the trash they pick up can be recycled.
Encourage them to bring in recyclable materials from home, particularly if their household doesn’t normally recycle items.
7. Visit A Recycling Center
Take your students to a local recycling center to learn about the recycling process and why this is so important. If you’ve been collecting items to be recycled, take these along as the youth group may be able to earn a little money in doing so.
8. Mind Map
Organize a brainstorming / mind mapping session looking at how to consume less. Split the group into three teams and have one team research and identify ways to reduce their consumption, the second team how they can reuse more items and the third team how they can recycle more.
Once they’re done, get each team to present their findings to the rest of the group, with their fellow students adding their own suggestions afterwards.
9. Earth Day Word Search
For younger students, create a word search using Earth Day-themed words. You can quickly and easily create free word searches using this free tool from Discovery Education.
10. Events
For US residents, check out the EPA website for Earth Day activities going on in your state that you can take the young people to.
11. Hike
Go on a hike in a state park, in the mountains or anywhere else close by where students can enjoy nature.
12. Zoo / Aquarium
Another way the young people can enjoy nature is by taking a trip to a zoo or aquarium. If you go on April 22, there’s a good chance they’ll also be doing some kind of special Earth Day event.
Questions: What other Earth Day activities for students can you think of? What do you have planned for your youth group on April 22? Let us know in the comments below.
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