Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

We had a wonderful week celebrating the Earth!  We kicked off the week learning about the 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle - with Brainpop Jr's clip:

To understand the 3 R's we spent a day on each one.  To learn about REDUCE we discussed all of the ways we already reduce the energy and water we use.  My cuties loved knowing they already knew ways they could help our Earth!

To learn about REUSE we created recycling trucks out of all items we can reuse like boxes, tubes, and paper.  Doing these creative thinking projects are one of our favorite activities.  My little love the freedom in creating and I love seeing what they create when they make a plan and work together - 21st century learning!

We labeled each of the trucks with the materials it can recycle.

To learn more about RECYCLING we gathered trash outside and then sorted all of our trash into the correct recycling truck.  We may have been spooked by a few bugs that were in our trucks at the end of the recycling activity!  EEKK!

In writer's workshop, we celebrated National Poetry Month with writing poems!  We started with creating a bubble map of the things the Earth provides for us.

Then we used our bubble map to write love poems to the Earth.

One of our favorite activities this week was creating band-aids for Earth with get-well messages written on them of how we can hep the Earth.  This book inspired us with ideas:

Another favorite book was this one:

Before we read it I asked my little what it means to "be green".  There answers were hilarious!  If you want a good laugh just ask your little this!

If I had only one Earth Day book it would be this one, though:

This book really makes littles aware of how the Earth is suffering and what we can do everyday to help the Earth.  There is even information about the Arctic melting, which affects the polar bears.  My class is so upset about it that we decided we would do a play as a fundraiser for Polar Bears International.  We chose Wide Mouth Frog from HeidiSongs because it's about animals.

I did this play a few years ago with my PreK class:

I just LOVE Earth Day week and empowering my littles to help our world everyday!  I also wore my Earth Day skirt this week to channel my inner Mrs. Frizzle!