4 Books to Celebrate Earth Day

We can celebrate our Earth all year by teaching our children to take care of it.

Grab a few of these books and try some activities to help your child love our earth.

Being obSEUSSed, I have to mention The Lorax story. A message about saving trees and standing up for our environment comes across to even toddler age listeners. There are newer Step Into Reading Lorax books with more current ways to help the earth.

Another new favorite is The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth. 

The illustrations in this book are so vibrant and captivating. I wouldn't mind having them framed and displayed on my walls at home. We went to a story scavenger hunt activity at the park for this book by Chris Burkard & David McClellan (Dreamling Books). 

My children loved the story of the boy who went in search of happiness. The boy searches each scene and asks to find happiness but the Earth reminded him he needs to "stand still for just a moment." I agree that sometimes we keep our children so busy playing and exploring outside but we may forget to take a moment to soak it all in and talk to our children about the beauty and importance of the earth. 

Dreamling Books, the publisher of The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth" took us on a story scavenger hunt. The kids ran to find clues around the park that led them to a prize. Parents can create their own Story Scavenger Hunt by creating small paper clues that lead to the next location then to a prize or destination (like a waterfall) at the end.

We are so lucky to live near these beautiful mountains. Our kids take it for granted sometimes. I always make a point to tak about them when we drive past them or look out the window at them. 

Our family enjoys the earth by geocaching. We go on hikes around our state or visit our local park to find little hidden treasure boxes. Anyone can join the fun using the Geocaching app. We also use a hiking GPS to find caches in remote areas without cell service. 

As we hike with a purpose, we also take time to notice the scenery, animals, bugs and other hikers. If we find trash along the trail we pick it up to dispose of properly. Our kids love these outdoor adventures. 

Old Turtle by Douglas Wood is another favorite of ours with detailed water color illustrations. The story is a fable of the way our earth was created. Animals play a big part of our earth. 

Look for animals at the park or an anima conservancy near you to learn more. Our children love our local Tracy Aviary. 

The fourth book I recommend is The Water Hole by Graeme Base. Hidden illustrations on pages get children interested in finding out why the water is disappearing on each page. The theme of this book will help you start a conversation with your child about water conservation. 

Talk about ways you can save water around home like taking shorter showers or smaller baths and turning water off while brushing teeth. 

We use leftover water in our dinner cups to water our plants.

What are some of your favorite books or activities to celebrate Earth Day? Leave a comment below.

*Disclosure, I received a free Boy Who Spoke to the Earth book in exchange for my honest review. 

Curious George Spring Special on PBS Earth Day

This Earth Day, Monday, April 22, PBS KIDS will air a new CURIOUS GEORGE special: CURIOUS GEORGE SWINGS INTO SPRING. (Check local listings for times. It will re-air Friday and is now available on DVD .)

Courtesy of ® & © 2013 Universal Studios and/or HMH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PBS KIDS ® Public Broadcasting Service.

PBS Kids sent us a screener kit with the movie and spring crafts to check out. We watched the movie as a family last weekend and the kids, including my 2-year-old, loved it.  The story takes off with Curious George having spring fever at the park, then he tries to get his dog friend Hundley to catch the fever but has a difficult time doing it. They explore canoe rides, country animals and more but it takes a hot air balloon to help Hundley catch spring fever.
The music is catchy and our favorite song was “We are the Wiener Dogs.” The movie has us excited for spring but we have to wait a few more weeks here in Utah. It is still snowing off and on.  In the mean time, we can do some fun crafts to get ready for spring.
SPRING CRAFTS:

PBS sent us some pencils and this PINWHEEL TEMPLATE (you can print one too) so the kids could color and create their own pinwheels.

Here is one my son made:

PBS also sent us supplies to create a bird feeder. You can get instructions from PBS here: PLASTIC BOTTLE BIRD FEEDER

CRAFT NOT RECOMMENDED TO TRY AT HOME:
They actually only sent us the bird seed and chop sticks for this craft. We didn’t have a 2-liter bottle so we had to get one at the store this week. That wasn’t the problem with this craft. The instructions tell you to poke holes in the top of the bottle for the string and holes on the side for the chop stick and eating spouts.  It suggests parents use scissors or a sharp knife.  It wouldn’t work on our bottle. We had to get a utility knife out and finally got a little hole. My husband finally pushed through the crack with a screw driver to make a larger hole. It took us over 30 minutes to make the holes. The kids got impatient (so did I).
During the process my daughter told us something she learned at the Recycle plant field trip last week: The bottom of plastic bottles are so tough that they shouldn’t be kept for anything and need to be melted down for re-use.  My husband said a drill is really necessary for this craft (which doesn’t make it very child friendly). Sure enough, I looked online and found directions that suggested using a drill.

On top of all this frustration, it was hard to feed string to go through the holes on top. We had to find a plastic cord to push all the way through the bottle and tie it at the bottle opening then pull back in.  We also misplaced our funnel so it was a major pain to fill the bird seen into the bottle. 
I normally enjoy crafting with my kids but this was a huge craft FAIL. Please don’t try making the bird feeder at home, unless you want to do it without your kids around.
We decorated the bottle with decorative Scotch tape (butterflies) and pink animal print Duck tape. That made it look nice enough to hang in the back yard. Now the kids are excited to see if any birds come.

EASY SPRING ACTIVITIES:
PBS also has a recycling challenge with badges you can print out. Our kids are big on recycling at our house already so it was a good review.Try the Pinwheel for a fun, easy, spring craft. And watch the Curious George movie to bring on the Spring Fever! 
A new CURIOUS GEORGE online game will launch in late April. Featuring natural science concepts such as plant growth and butterfly metamorphosis, the game will give kids an opportunity to create their own music videos about spring.

CELEBRATE EARTH DAY and SPRING:
How will you celebrate?

Disclosure: I was sent a screener of the movie with a spring craft kit for review purposes.

Arthur Books, Going Green with Author Marc Brown

Arthur, the friendly aardvark, returns after 10 years to teach children how to save the environment in Marc Brown’s newest book, Arthur Turns Green

A few weeks ago I was able to take my kids to see Marc Brown speak at our local public library. He took questions from the kids, then told of his inspirations for his characters and story ideas.

Since we often read Arthur books to our kids and they watch the TV shows on PBS several times a week, I was surprised to find out this is the first book he has written in 10 years, in honor of the 35th anniversary of Arthur. He is doing a small tour to promote the book and seemed sincerely focused on encouraging kids to learn how to save the environment.

Here are 6 Ways to GO GREEN I discussed with our kids after listening to him read this book:

1. Share our books with others and when we are done with them, donate them to a charity like READING TREE who distributes them or recycles damaged books.
2. Turn the water off while brushing your teeth.
3. Turn lights off when you aren’t in a room.
4. Put paper and special plastics in our recycle bin.
5. Turn off toys when finished playing to not waste batteries (reducing landfill waste).
6. Put toys and clothes (they’ve outgrown) into the Yard Sale Box.  We have a yard sale every other year and promote it as a ‘Recycle Sale’.  Here is a sign I created to ‘brand’ our yard sale. I put it in the classifieds and print it on card stock then attach it to a florescent green poster board with more time/date/location details to hang around our neighborhood. We’ve had a lot of success with people saying it got their attention.

Free Printable for Yard Sale, Recycle Sale

The kids and I also thought it was fascinating to find out Marc Brown lived on Martha's Vineyard where he has to take a ferry to get home.  He spoke about his barn/old school house that was turned into a studio where he writes and illustrates the Arthur stories. More about where he lives and creates his books.
 Video of Marc Brown reading his new book, Arthur Turns Green can be found on Lesson Plan SOS, an amazing blog.
Our local library has a great puppet named Earl E. Literacy. See Earl’s interview with Marc Brown here.
My kids had him sign several books they brought from home. The local book shop sponsoring the event ran out of the new book before the event so we’ve still got to find a way to get a copy of Arthur Turns Green