What You Can Do to Celebrate Earth Day on April 22 – freebies and more

The celebration of Earth Day began over 40 years ago. It is a day to celebrate our planet and think about how we can help our environment. Did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency was established not long after that first Earth Day in 1970? The Clean Air Act also passed that same year. Now Earth Day is celebrated in more than 175 countries by an estimated 500 million people!

There are lots of ways to celebrate Earth Day:

• Talk to the kids about recycling and reusing that rubbish.
• Go outside and plant trees.
• Go on a nature scavenger hunt with the kids.
• Fly a kite.
• Make a tire swing.
• Change your paper bills to online ones.
• Take that stack of used printer ink cartridges to be recycled.
• Turn off the lights. Change your incandescent light bulbs to LEDs or energy approved CFLs.
• Start a compost pile.
• Wear green or brown.
• Ride your bike or walk as much as possible.  Car pool.
• Clean up litter in your neighborhood, your local playground or park.

•  Bring re-usable grocery bags to the store.
• Read through this fabulous pdf – slide show about plastic bags with your kids. That’s where I learned that somewhere between 500,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 plastic bags are used in the USA each year (that’s 500 billion and 1 trillion, but seeing all those zeros is impressive!)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Did you know that Target, the Disney store, Jo-anns and others are giving out free reusable bags in celebration of Earth Day on April 22?  See details here.

Here’s another great opportunity to celebrate Earth Day,  what about going to a national park? There is Free National Park Entrance April 21-29, 2012: Get out and enjoy our beautiful National Parks. Click here to see participating parks in your state.

Arches National Park, Utah – I’d love to take the kids here!

(picture from Wikimedia Commons)

There are so many wonderful units and printables out there to talk about Earth Day with your kids.For example there’s a terrific Going Green Unit by Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants.

Other Earth Day links:

• You will find an Earth Day linky party at Sunny Days in Second Grade with more than 45 links to Earth Day facts, subtraction, writing prompts and more.
• There are 42 Free Earth Day Worksheets at education.com including endangered animal printables, punctuate the story (Earth Day), the amazing tree maze, inside earth word search and more.
• Make a water cycle bracelet
• Montessori-inspired Earth Day activities at Living Montessori Now
• DLTK Kids has Earth Day crafts, games, poems, songs and general information.
• And there are more Earth Day craft ideas including recycleable crafts, nature crafts and more over at Family Fun.
• You’ll find a collection of Earth Day Crafts at the Crafty Crow.

And of course there’s lots, lots more out there!

How are you celebrating Earth Day this year?