Earth Day is Tuesday, April 22!

Spring has arrived and Earth Day is just around the corner. Earth Day is April 22, and there’s still plenty of time to plan some fun, educational, and action-oriented activities. Celebrating Earth Day can be a great way for schools to showcase classroom environmental education, highlight efforts to “green” the school facility, or engage the whole school community in making a difference. An Earth Day activity can be done in one class period, can take place over the course of a few class periods or a week, or can be a school-wide activity or fair. The best activities offer opportunities to both teach about an issue and make a tangible environmental impact.

To make it easier for you, Green Schools Initiative has compiled a list of fun and meaningful ideas and links to get you started. But use your own and your students’ creativity and dream up your own! Create an Earth Day Committee at your school with students, parents, and teachers to help plan the event. The start of a great Earth Day celebration is right here at your fingertips. Ideas from our list include actions from each of the Four Pillars of a Green School:

• Strive to be Toxics Free: Make your own green cleaners
• Use Resources Sustainably: Organize a school-wide Swap Meet to reuse items, or a Walk & Bike to School Day
• Create Green Schoolyards, Serve Healthy Food: Create a container garden, conduct an organic food taste test
• Teach, Learn, Engage: Create and distribute a petition to eliminate the use of plastic bags in your community

Download Earth Day Ideas & Links (PDF)

Download Earth Day Ideas & Links (Links are live in Word Doc)

Don’t forget to share the results of your activity and celebrate your actions with the larger school community. Communicating results is an important part of having a lasting positive impact. Plan to write an article for your school newsletter (or better yet, have the students write it!) your local paper, or the school bulletin board.

Together, we can make every day Earth Day, and every person in every school can make a difference. We look forward to hearing from you about your Earth Day events! Send stories and photos of your celebrations to us at info@greenschools.net and we’ll feature them in an upcoming newsletter.