Celebrating Earth Day This Year

Celebrate Earth Day with Hands-On Education’s free activities.

March 2025 | 6 min read

Our World | Official Blog for Hands-On Education

Free Earth Day Activities Book

Impactful activities to celebrate our world

If you’re looking for ways to celebrate Earth Day this year, look no further! Our Earth Day activities book offers meaningful and impactful activities to celebrate our world. We are giving this to you for free you so you can get going straight away. All you need to do is download the book and invite your child to choose which activities they wish to do this Earth Day. Print the book or save paper and look at the activities on a screen.

Teaching sustainability to primary aged children

No matter their age, I believe all children should be provided the opportunity to connect to nature and develop a relationship with the natural world around them. This involves getting outside. Play in a park, go for a walk in the woods or even explore a community garden. Plants and animals are all around us – we just need to look carefully.

When it comes to sustainability, parents and educators should consider ways they can lead by example. Children learn by watching and copying our own actions. Recycling is something which can be done at home and at school. Discuss the difference in materials that can and cannot be recycled.

Litter picking safely

Litter blowing around on the street has been a problem where we live. It blows out of recycling boxes and ends up everywhere. For us, taking care of the environment involves litter picking. Discuss and explain why we shouldn’t pick up litter off the ground with our bare hands. To pick up litter safely and hygienically I recommend using litter pickers. Show your child how to use them, keeping in mind they will need some hand strength and hand-eye coordination. This needs to be a team effort, having someone carry a bag and holding it open so the rubbish doesn’t fall out.

Our cress head.

Planting for the environment and fresh food

Planting seeds is a great way to celebrate nature and help our planet. Here are a couple of fun seed planting activities:

Cress head
Making a cress head is one of our favourite actives! Recycle a plastic bottle by cutting it in half and using the bottom of the bottle as a plant pot. Fill the pot with soil and sprinkle cress seeds on top. Don’t forget to glue a couple of googly eyes on the side! Water the soil daily to keep it damp and watch the cress grow. This is a fast-growing seed and it won’t take long before the pot has a whole head full of cress. Cut some cress off and add it to salads and sandwiches.
Sunflower seeds
What a great way to celebrate Earth Day – by planting a sunflower seed! We love watching these beautiful flowers grow. Have everyone in your family or classroom plant one seed in a pot. Water your seed and place it in a sunny spot. Whose flower will grow the tallest?

Earth collage activity picture

Two fun recycling activities

Finding new and innovative ways to recycle materials is a vital part of Earth Day and this can begin from a young age. Here are a couple of ways to encourage creativity in recycling.

Earth collage
I love this activity because I find tearing up a magazine into small pieces very therapeutic! Flip through the pages of magazines and tear out the pages with blue and green colours. Draw a circle on a piece of paper or use a paper plate as a template and invite your child to stick the torn pieces to make a collage of Earth.
Recycling sculptures
Many of our hands-on activities require recycling materials and I recommend you keep a small (or large) collection of materials to reuse throughout the year. Inviting your child to create their own sculptures using recycled materials is a great open-ended activity, encouraging your child to use their imagination and experiment with different materials.

Recycle toilet roll tubes and make binoculars.

Helping nature activity ideas

There are a number of activities children can do to encourage birds and minibeasts into the garden.

Bug hotel
Like many young children, Teddy and Harry have always enjoyed finding minibeasts in the garden. Making a bug hotel in your garden encourages little creatures into a safe space and makes a great spot for us to observe and learn more about them.
Welcome the birds!
We love birds and try to encourage them to visit our garden by making them food and providing a home-made bird bath. To find out the ingredients you need to make bird food read our bird seed wreath blog.

Providing water for birds to drink is just as important as providing food. To make a bird bath fill a shallow plastic tray, ideally a garden plant tray, with water. Then place small pebbles or stones in the water for the birds to stand on while drinking. We like to place our bird bath up high, or at least off the ground and away from predators. Particularly in the warmer months we find everything from blue tits to wood pigeons coming. Our bird bath is placed outside our dinner table window to prompt discussions about the natural world while eating together as a family.

Harry’s playdough Earth.

Use storytelling to introduce environmental issues

Storytelling is a fantastic way to help children understand the world around them. I particularly enjoy reading books to younger children with beautiful illustrations. Here are some of our favourite picture books introducing different aspects related to climate change and the environment. These books are suitable for children aged four to seven.