Ideas Based on Developmental Areas: (Printable Version Here)
- Sensory: Make a sensory bin! Use rice (dye it blue/green) or choose to use blue/green shredded paper, blue and green playdoh (let students mix), finger paint, make earth day slime, planting a tree, planting seeds, and shaving cream (dye it blue/green).
- Fine Motor: Try using a garbage truck shape sorter! Children are required to grasp a shape and work to strategically place that shape in the correct position on the garbage truck. Work on speech, language, motor, and turn-taking with this hands-on toy! Some additional ideas include: using tongs with a sensory bin, picking up/placing globe mini erasers when working on an activity and the puzzle globe.
- Gross Motor: The act of recycling, by picking up and placing items into different recycling bins, provides children with large body movements. This hands-on engagement can be great to do when working on this theme. Consider saving some of the items that you recycle and placing them all in one bin. Then use these mixed recyclables as a way for your child to learn to sort by plastic, metal, (etc.) This also can link with cognition (classifying/sorting) but can also give your child a movement component to help them with their learning.
- Play: Create centers for your children where they can engage in play in your environment. At one station they may dress up like garbage workers and sort through the recycling. At another station, they may engage in pretend gardening activities. By setting out these themed stations it is something that will get your children excited and expose them to several opportunities for language throughout.
- Cognition: sequence steps needed to plant a tree, sort items (trash vs. recycle), sort recyclables (paper/plastic/metal), match mat (picture to picture matching), adapted books (matching the pictures), puzzles (work on cognitive + fine motor), identify ways to help the earth vs harm, monitor attention to task and slowly work to increase it over time.
- Social/Emotional: Many of the books are written to answer the questions “why should I ____” (ex: why should I recycle). Relating to children’s common questions. Sharing with children that our actions have an impact on the world around us, is very important. Help guide your children through making good choices about how to help the environment.
Family Activities: (Printable Family Letter)
Talk about ways that you can care for the world around you. These can be small steps that you take at home such as, turning off lights in rooms that you are no longer in, turning the water off while you are brushing your teeth, and choosing to donate used items instead of throwing them away. Together we can learn not only speech and language skills but also how to make the world a better place.
Book Recommendations: (Printable Version Here)
This is a list of books that pair well with the Earth Day Theme. I highly recommend searching some of these titles on Epic! or on Youtube if you're looking for free ways to utilize these stories for your kiddos. Another option is to print the list of recommendations and take it to your local library. Check out the books you're interested in.
When you know you want to add some books to your personal or school library, you can use the links below to purchase through Amazon.
Play Recommendations: (Printable Version Here)
Apps That You Can Download: (Printable Version Here)
- Bert Saves The Earth
- The Four Seasons
- The Earth: Tiny Bop
- Trash It!
- Sophie The Sweater
- My City Cleaning
- Shapes Garbage Truck
- Earth: Save the Ocean
Educational Video Links: (Printable Version Here)
Grab your list of words related to the Earth Day theme that are categorized by speech sound above. This is helpful for your mixed speech therapy groups or if you have a child who is working on their articulation skills in speech therapy.