Earth Day Activities for Toddlers
By LAURIN BRAINARD Updated Mar. 10, 2024
Let’s dive right in to Earth Day activities for toddlers! Earth Day is an excellent opportunity to teach our little ones how we can take care of our planet. It’s a great way to learn about recycling, caring for the world, planting trees, and more! Here are a few of my favorite ways to celebrate Earth Day with my little ones!
Earth Day Toddler Lesson Plans
This Earth Day Toddler Unit is made up of 11 activities you can use for the entire month of April:
- literacy and language activities
- sensory play bin
- math activities
- fine motor activities
- art activities
Interested in downloading these Earth Day activities that you can print and use right away? Click on the image or button below to check them out in my TpT shop!
Earth Day Field Trip for Toddlers
What better way to kick off a week of Earth Day fun than with a trip to the recycling center! We had so much fun learning how to sort recycling materials and my daughter even walked away with a few dollars and coins!
When you finish the field trip, you can come home and read a book all about recycling and color the pictures.
Earth Day Sensory Bin for Toddlers
In this sensory bin, you can help your little ones learn about the ways our world can help us! Your child will match the colored pictures to the black and white workmat. As they match, you can talk about the ways that each item helps us live our daily lives.
Earth Day Math Activities for Toddlers
Do you have a little one who enjoys making puzzles? Puzzles for toddlers are a HUGE hit in our house! In this activity, your little ones will count items related to Earth Day, then match to the number to complete the puzzle.
Learning to recognize patterns is such an important skill for our little ones. When we learn patterns, it is helping us learn what comes next in a series. This will apply to so many other areas of life as they grow. Using these pattern strips, you can help your child learn how to apply glue to the back of a square image. Then, they will paste the picture squares to complete each pattern.
Earth Day Fine Motor Activities for Toddlers
Watching our little ones learn new vocabulary and hearing them incorporate words into speech is so much fun! In this fine motor activity for preschoolers, we are working on shaping play dough into Earth Day items. As you give your child each card, say the name of the word and then have fun making the picture together!
Every time I pull out children’s scissors, my little ones get so excited! They love to wiggle their little fingers into the holes and open and close the scissors. The most important thing to teach your child when introducing scissors is that we ONLY cut paper or the other items we are asked to cut! When we cut, we keep our fingers in the correct holes, thumbs up, and our scissors over the table.
Learning how to hold scissors can be tricky for little ones, so don’t be afraid to use hand over hand movements as they learn.
Earth Day Science Pollution Activity
I never imagined I would be teaching my 2 to 3 year toddlers about pollution, but this activity made it make sense! Our family loves going to the beach, so in this activity we talked about how pollution can hurt the fish in the ocean. I cut out two paper fish and set them on the table. Then, I filled up two zip-top bags with water. One bag had clean water. The second bag is filled with polluted water. To create polluted water, I added a couple drops of brown food coloring and some sprinkles.
Now it is the fun time! Give your child the bag of fresh water. Have them squeeze it and watch the bubbles move over the fish. Then, give your child the bag of polluted water and have them move their fingers over the paper fish underneath it. What do they notice? Does this look like a safe home for the fish? As they squish the sprinkles, they will begin to dissolve and they will see what happens when we throw things into the ocean that don’t belong. It is a great way to teach about pollution and the impact on wildlife!
Toddler Curriculum
I hope you are feeling inspired to have a week of learning through Earth Day themed activities! You can download this Earth Day Toddler Unit and make it easy to plan some fun activities. It includes 11 lesson plans and all the Birthday themed printable materials you will need to make teaching your toddler as easy as possible.
If you are looking for an entire year of fun for you and your little ones, then check out my Complete Toddler School Curriculum Bundle for all the plans and printables you need for an entire year of learning!
If you want to take a closer look at our favorite themes to use to teach toddlers, then check out this post: 40 Themes For Toddler Lessons and Activities
I hope you enjoy playing and learning with your little ones this week! Feel free to send me an Insta message at @theprimarybrain if you have any questions about how to get started teaching your little ones!
This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.
Written on March 10th, 2024 by Laurin Brainard