New Morning Community Preschool Atlanta Earth Day Celebration

Christina Lane, Co-Director of New Morning Community Preschool contributed this story about an upcoming Atlanta Earth Day Celebration. She also shares how to make Earth Day relatable at home with your young learners.

Atlanta Earth Day Celebration

New Morning Community Preschool will host and Earth Day Celebration on Saturday, April 20, 2013 from 10:30am until 12:30pm at Bessie Branham Park in Kirkwood. RSVP on Facebook for the event and updates. There will be lots of fun activities for kids ages two to six that will teach about the importance of caring for the earth. This event is open to the community, so spread the word and bring a friend! Entrance and almost all of the activities are FREE. However there will be a few green vendors on site and some’ make and take’ specialty craft stations that may have a small charge so please have some cash on hand.

It’s designed spread awareness of how children can partner with their families and communities to become better stewards of the Earth. Leading up to the event we visit our community neighbors and we learn about the simple things we can do each day at home and at school to lessen our impact on the environment. Several of the ideas can be applied easily in your home!

Teach Children About Earth Day

1. Learning to Reuse and Recycle trash.* The idea of reducing trash comes pretty quickly to most preschoolers. They are familiar with art projects that reuse household items like toilet paper rolls and many of them treasure bits of sparkly paper or other things that adults often toss into a recycle bin. At school we have three places to throw away trash. The recycle bin, the regular trash bin which is mostly used for Kleenex, and an Art Bin which is used for scrap paper or other clean items that might can be used later to create something new. We eat off of washable plates for snack time and the children shake off hands after washing them instead of using a paper towel every time.
2. Turning food waste into compost for our garden.* At our Earth Day event we will show examples of several easy ways to home compost. Even a simple storage bin with vented holes can be an easy way to produce enough compost fertilizer for a small porch garden. Of course the addition of red wiggler worms or a bigger system that turns is even more exciting for a preschooler. Watching food and yard debris break down into rich soil is preschool science at its best.
3. Studying the animals and plants that are native to our homes.* We spend a lot of time exploring our ‘own backyard’ and learning about the insects and birds that live around us. Understanding how our lives effect the lives of other organisms is a really natural way to see our impact on the Earth. The easiest way to learn about native plants is to go on a nature walk right near your home and collect pretty native flowers and plants for a large pot at your house. Of course deepening the study by looking for certain plants that might attract a certain insect your child is interested in would be even better.