Earth Day

Last year, before Heather and I ventured into the realm of a teaching blog, I blogged about teacher stuff on my family's blog.  As Earth Day approaches on Monday, I thought I would repost the Earth Day post I did last year.  I loved this activity so much that I intend to redo it on Monday.

I loved this week's activity this week so much that it needed to be shared!  It all started when I found this Argus poster at Education Express.  Isn't it beautiful!?!

I absolutely fell in love with this poster and wanted to figure out how I could create an Earth Day craftivity for my second graders to do.  I came across two different ideas from very crafty teachers on Pinterest at Teacher Idea Factory here and The First Grade Parade here.  I liked their ideas so much, that I wanted to see how I could combine the two.  Here is what I got.

I took the kids outside and took their pictures with their hands in the air.  Then I printed the pictures as a full page.  I simply cut their bodies out.  Then we cut circles on blue construction paper and painted their hands to make the handprint.  Then we added the paper where they wrote what they would do to protect the earth since the future was in their hands.  They had a blast making these.  I was really proud of how they turned out.  And they made a super cute addition to the hallway!

Click on the picture below to pick up your own free copy!

The Future is in Our Hands!

Arbor Day

This past Friday was Arbor Day.  We used Earth Day and Arbor Day to have 2 great weeks of Earth friendly learning.  The week prior to Earth Day, we did a unit with The Lorax.  The week following Earth Day (and the week of Arbor Day) we did a week long unit with The Great Kapok Tree and learned about Rain forests.  We are very pleased with how well both weeks turned out.  We love how we can use so many skills within the framework of one story or as in the case of this week 2 stories!).  As a culmination of both weeks, we took the entire 2nd grade to see The Lorax at the local movie theatre.  What a fun day!  Not to mention all of the comparing and contrasting we could do with the book, and both the old and new version of the movie.  Then later, a colleague's husband who works for a tree company in town, brought a tree to add to a tree that Heather donated.  He taught us how to plant and care for trees and the kids had so much fun, they cheered!