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Earth Day Activities for Kids

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I feel like I’ve written about Earth Day a lot, and that’s a good thing because it’s important to take some time to think about how humans are treating the earth and things we can do to help it.

We’ve covered Earth Day printables, some crafts and recycled activities, and shard ideas for celebrating Earth Day with kids.

How about some Earth Day games? My Motherhood Made Easy has a set of printable Earth Day themed games including bingo, a word scramble, maze and puzzles. These would be great to use in a classroom when you’re talking about Earth Day, or you can use at least some of them at home, depending on how many kids you have.

I love a good STEM challenge, and of course there are Earth Day themed STEM challenges out there. The Homeschool Resource Room has a great list of STEM projects you can try for Earth Day, including making a potato battery and building with recyclable materials. Some of these wouldn’t work as well in a classroom but they’re great for home.

Kids can figure out how their choices make an environmental impact with this carbon footprint printable activity from Little Bins for Little Hands. It’s a good way to focus on little things that we all can do that collectively can make a difference for the planet.

The I can help the earth worksheet printable from Crafts By Ria is another way to have these conversations, and you can turn the printed sheet into a little book while you talk about different things kids can do to help the planet such as recycling and walking places when they can.

Speaking of recycling, Adventure in a Box has a printable game for sorting the recycling to help kids learn what is and is not able to be recycled. You can also talk about how some food items can be composted and different ways the recycling might be separated to make it easier to recycle.

Have you read?

Book Review: The Festival of Lights

As if Diwali weren’t colorful and fun enough, The Festival of Lights: A Lift-the-flap Diwali Celebration by Namita Moolani Mehra, illustrated by Darshika Varm, makes it even more fun to read about with flaps and things to lift and pull to see more information or details in the illustrations. 

The book is a story about a family getting ready for Diwali and what happens on the different days of the five-day celebration. There’s cleaning, shopping, crafting, food preparation and getting the home altar ready for the big day. 

It covers decorating the outside of the house with rangoli, diyas and lanterns, buying sweets to share with family and friends, the sights and scents of the mandir (home temple), getting dressed up in new fancy clothes, the story of Diwali and celebrations with relatives.  

Flaps (there are more than 140 in all) give you vocabulary words for different foods and definitions, as well as fun things like what’s inside the shopping basket or where the cat is hanging out. They also help illuminate the story of Diwali, which is the triumph of good over evil as Lord Ram defeated the demon Ravana to save his wife, Sita. 

This pretty and colorful book helps kids understand what Diwali is and how it is celebrated, regardless of whether they practice it at home. This would be a nice book to keep in a classroom (it’s rated for kids ages 3-7) or to have at home to teach kids about Diwali even if it’s not something you celebrate. Where I live there are a lot of people from India so we are probably exposed to Diwali more than some other regions of America, but it’s a nice holiday to know about wherever you live. 

Combine with the book Diwali and check out some fun lantern crafts and printables for kids to round out your experience. 

About the book: 24 pages, hardcover, published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail prices $22.99.

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