Earth Day for Preschoolers - Part 3

When I sat down to prepare some activities for Earth Day week, I was afraid I might not have enough for the week but can you believe I actually prepared "Types of Pollution" Nomenclature cards that Adrian and I did not have a chance to go over during Earth Day Week? I guess there was a lot more to do than I thought.  One thing is sure, Earth Day or not, you know what they say, "Everyday should be Earth Day" so maybe I'll pull them out later... :)

Homemade Wind Farm

I bought these cute (and working) toothpick pinwheels two years ago. I thought I'd use them during a summer themed week but thought again when weather week dropped by. In the end, I couldn't think of how to use them but knew exactly how to if it came to Earth Day week: make a wind farm. Using a thick styrofoam board I had kept from packaging, Adrian would simply poke them in so they wouldn't touch one another, in neat rows, and blow on them to see if his farm worked. And it did! He might not remember but he was born in Denmark, one of the leading countries in terms of offshore wind farms and he saw them daily on our walks by the sea.

Endangered Species : Clay Sea turtle in Coral Reef

I really had planned on spending more time talking about endangered species and showing pictures of them but time went by fast. And we did do a lot of talking too. And we did see a lot of cards too. So...I thought we'd talk and craft a bit instead. My goal was to introduce clay this week. Clay is natural and comes from Earth so it was a perfect timing for this. I would have loved to find a source of clay here but did not so I bought a tub from Crayola instead. Then, I told Adrian we'd make a sea turtle (one of the simplest animals to make in my mind) with the clay. He tried pretty hard to model his after mine (see his on the right) but gave up after it broke up and just rolled the rest of the clay. While we worked the clay, we talked about how clay felt and how it came from Earth but also about endangered species. We let the clay projects dry for 3 days and painted them then. Adrian decided that his should all be blue. I told him it reminded me of coral. He liked the idea and made my sea turtle "swim" through it all.

Clay Project before painting

Yogurt Cup & Pompom Counters

I don't know about your children but mine are avid yogurt eaters in the morning. Zahavah eats a great color combo of Danone's/Danon's children's yogurt while Adrian sticks to yellows and oranges. In no time, I had accumulated a nice set of colorful cups for my Earth Day cups and counters. I used small pompoms for counters and for number markers, the back of a cereal box cut to pieces. Of course, these tiny cups won't contain much but they were still challenging because they were so small and light. If I remember right, these are called Danonino pretty much worldwide except in Germany but they look the same pretty much anywhere in the world anyway...

Stacking Recyclable Yogurt Cups

While you've got the yogurt cups out...why not stack them into a pyramid? Or several kinds of pyramids? The idea is to play with recyclables; to reuse them in fun ways. This was definitely fun...until I saw the kids trying to do the same next morning with cups that still had yogurt in... :)

We finally received our Moveable Alphabet...and no this is not Earth Day Related... :)

A long while ago, I ordered from KidAdvance a small set of Moveable Alphabet. Well folks, it is here! Our first package got lost but the second made it in a timely fashion so during Earth Day week, we tested it out. I had Adrian match the moveable alphabet to the Sandpaper Letters. No trouble there. Moving on to the next Moveable Alphabet exercise in my book... :)

Masca, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, aka Paradise on Earth
MY favorite place on the planet is indeed the Canary Islands. 
Don't look for me anywhere else after I retire...that is where I'll be! :)

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!