Happy Earth

For Earth Day yesterday we did a simple sorting activity similar to our "How Do I Feel" game. Since Bubble is so young I kept the concepts simple, such as; 'recycle and reuse', 'walking instead of driving our car' and 'planting trees' for some of our happy earth statements and 'wasting water', 'throwing our rubbish on the ground' and 'not taking care animals and wildlife' as some of our unhappy earth statements. For older children you could use more complex ideas or even focus on one topic such as pollution or looking after the ocean.
I wasn't sure if Bubble would be very into this activity but we've played it five times over since yesterday afternoon, so I think it was a success!

WE USED:

to make our earth faces:

* paper plates
* blue food colouring
* paint brush
* green paint
* permanent marker

For the game:

* paper plate earth faces
* blutack (or sticky tack)
* statement cards
(made by cutting up speech cards and writing statements that have a positive and negative impact on the Earth. We made seven for each but you could do as many as you like!

Our Earth faces were made by painting paper plates with blue food colouring to get a watery effect, then adding green paint after it was dry.

We then drew on our faces with permanent marker
and stuck them to the wardrobe door with blutack for our sorting activity, but this could easily be done on a table top or the floor too.

I read out our statements one by one and we talked about what each one meant and which side it should go on.
Some Bubble found easy, such as 'looking after animals and wildlife' and 'wasting our food'. Others were harder such as 'using lots of chemicals in our home' and 'conserving our water'. This game was such a great way to introduce lots of topics to Bubble that we had never discussed before without the whole thing being overwhelming or too confusing. She could identify with the Earth feeling 'happy' or 'sad'.