Jungle Learners: Our Earth Day......Week!

We celebrated Earth ~~Day~~ Week in my classroom last week as I'm sure a lot of you did as well!

We started out our week by doing a simple art project....marble painting!!

I haven't done this with my kid yet this year and they LOVED it. They cut out their own circle shape for their Earth, then worked their magic with the marbles:

They all turned out SO cute!

I used a DARLING unit from my good friend, Shannon, from The Teaching Twosome:

{If you haven't checked out her blog yet, click here! She is fabulous and has so many fun ideas.}

This unit introduced me to an amazing book, "Michael Recycle" by Ellie Bethel

After looking at this book on Amazon, I had to have it. It is adorable! I also bought "Michael Recycle meets Litterbug Doug" Seriously, check these out! The illustrations are amazing.

After reading this book in class, we talked about how we can be planet protectors and then made Shannon's Michael Recycle craft! {To see pictures of this, scroll further down the page} My kids were all SO excited to make it.

There are so many other great things included in this 71-page unit and it's only $3.50! Definitely check it out! :)

I also used another amazing unit from Teacher to the Core:

I fell in love with this unit the first time I saw it on her blog. One of the science standards I get to teach my kinders, is Ecology! This unit breaks it down so wonderfully, and in a way that they can understand! LOVE it. If you haven't seen this already, definitely check it out!!

It is a 99-page unit including things from Smart Art activities and an Interactive Little Book, to an Addition Center and a Family, School, Community Connection Project.

My kids loved the interactive book! They were so excited to take them home and teach their families all about Ecology.

{I was not asked to promote these wonderful units in any way, I'm just so excited about both of them!!}

The following picture include items from both of the above units about what we did last week!

We learned about what it means to Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

Then followed it up by playing a "Helping or Hurting" game to determine if the statements were helping or hurting the Earth.

I just have to add in something here! At the end of the day, one of my little girls asked if she could draw on the board...this is what she ended up drawing:

She was pretending to be the teacher and would ask me if certain things were helping or hurting the Earth. She said, "I didn't pick up some trash, is that good or bad?" I responded by saying, "You didn't!?" In a quiet voice she said, "Not for real, I didn't REALLY do that, I'm just pretending!" Haha. I love these little kids!

After I would reply she would draw a line from her drawing to the "Earth" it belonged to:

The Earth on the left, has a heart on it, for helping. The Earth on the right has a bandaid (although it does look like an eye!) for hurting.

It made me so happy to know that she has truly internalized the information we'd learned earlier that day and I couldn't resist taking a few picture of it!

We made the adorable Michael Recycle craft, and I put it together with a Planet Protector page from the Ecology Unit. They drew a picture of how they could be a Planet Protector:

My kids also decided why they loved the Earth using this ADORABLE Facebook fan freebie (It's still there today, but I'm not sure how much longer it will be there!!!) from Graphics From the Pond: