Arbor Day for Kids

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.

Lacing is a great fine motor activity, and most kids go through a phase where they enjoy working with lacing cards. It helps promote focus and is a great quiet activity for kids to do in the car or to fill time in the classroom. And of course knowing how to lace is the beginning of knowing how to sew, which is great for all kids to learn (more on teaching kids to sew here).

There are lots of ways to make your own lacing cards. This one is just a pin but it’s easy to make lacing cards with any shape a child is into using cardboard and a nail to poke the holes. This could be fun for letter and number recognition or spelling the child’s name. Or try this version from Hey Azka, which uses a hole punch to make bigger holes so you can lace with shoe laces.

You can also just do lacing cards with paper, but it’s a great idea to print them on card stock and/or laminate them to make them sturdier for little hands. Homeschool Share has a set of alphabet lacing cards, which are free with email signup. Deceptively Educational has a set of number lacing cards with numbers 0 to 10.

Picklebums has some basic shape lacing cards, too.

Living Life and Learning has a bunch of cute printable lacing cards, including back to school designs, shoes kids can lace and learn to tie and ocean themed lacing cards. She also has tips for making your own lacing cards.

A Rose Tinted World made their lacing cards with craft foam, which makes them a little more durable than paper and you can cut it more easily than cardboard. They used a die cutting machine but you can also cut shapes by hand.

I also love the cat and mouse cards from Seam Whisperer. They also have some spring themed designs. So cute!

If you want to make lacing cards that are more open ended, check out this tutorial form Pretty Life Girls to make lacing cards that are more like geo boards. Theirs are made with wood but you can also do this with cardboard, craft foam or card stock.

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