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!

Earth Day... Hooray!

Happy Monday!  Here are some of our Earth Day activities from last week.  I would've posted them sooner, but my sweet hubby just opened his latest show (her is an actor and director) and needs the camera and my little lap top for the shows.  So here is Earth Day fun from my little buzzing room!

We started out with a schema chart.

 We started out the week by learning that the Earth is sick and we can help it.  We read this book to help us  understand more about Earth and what's happening to it.

 

After reading we learned more about reduce, reuse, and recycle.  I taught them a Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle song.

The next day we started putting our knowledge of the three r's to use by making art work from reusable trash.  I had sent home a note the weekend before for families to send reusable trash to school.  We pulled out some of the trash materials and decided what pieces we could use to make trees.  It was completely up to them to pick what they wanted to use.  I got this idea from Michelle at Apples and ABC's.

 

We also reused a lot of the materials to create monsters, robots, puppets, etc.  

We also learned to recycle.  I found this random "recycle machine" at Walmart on clearnace several years ago and use it every year for Earth Day.  My cuties had to tear or cut old paper and then we placed it in the machine.  We took turns spinning it.

 

After we finished spinning, we pushed the gooey paper into a mold to shape it like a star.  While it was drying, we did some interactive writing about the steps to make the recycled paper.

 

We also learned to reduce.  We read this book

 

which talks about 10 things we can do to help the Earth.  Then we drew and wrote we could do to reduce the amount of energy we use.

 

We also read this book

 

and created this chart

 

which helped us make these

 

We also turned our plant pots into The Lorax.

 

 
On a side note, I just had to share that I met Natalie Grant last Friday!  If you don't know who she is, check out the video below.  She is a contemporary Christian music singer and is my FAVORITE!  I was blessed to meet her because she was in town for a conference called Dare to Be.  I was asked to be at the conference as a volunteer for World Vision.  (My hubby and I sponsor a child so I was asked to volunteer and try to get more kiddos sponsored - anything for the cuties!)  After the AMAZING conference was complete, she came out to say "thank you" to the World Vision volunteers!  Here she is singing one of my favorites:

...and we got 34 kiddos sponsored!  Sprinkles to Jesus!