Arbor Day for Kids

April 20, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Arbor Day is a day dedicated to the planting and appreciation of trees. It is celebrated on the last Friday in April in the United States. The first Arbor Day was celebrated on April 10, 1872, in Nebraska. More than one million trees were planted on that day. Arbor Day is now celebrated in all 50 states and in many other countries around the world.

Arbor Day is a reminder of the importance of trees to our environment. Trees provide us with oxygen, clean air, and water. They also help to regulate the climate and provide habitat for wildlife. Trees can also beautify our communities and make them more livable.

Kids can take part in Arbor Day by planting a tree or learning more about trees in your yard, playground or town. (Maybe also climbing a tree if the weather is nice.) Or try a tree-related scavenger hunt like this one from Homeschool of 1.

Woo Jr. has lots of great printables about Arbor Day, including fact sheets, leaf identification, a page for doing research about the state tree of a state, a word search, a crossword and more. This is a great place to start building your lessons.

Raising Our Kids has a good collection of Arbor Day coloring sheets, as does Best Coloring Pages for Kids. Or grab a word search from Monster Word Search.

And of course there are all sorts of tree related crafts that you can make to cap off your Arbor Day celebration (or make while you’re reading or watching The Lorax, of course!). There’s a nice collection of tree crafts for Arbor Day or any other time available from Fun Family Crafts. Or have kiddos draw their favorite tree and share a story about it.

How about making a chocolate popcorn tree for a snack? Get the instructions from Hungry Happenings.

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Reflecting on the Past Year with Kids

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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