Celebrate Earth Day all month with one of these five engaging and collaborative Earth Day math and science integrated activities.
1. Lunch Math
Before Earth Day:
Invite students to organize, represent, and interpret their lunch into data! Before throwing their lunch away, students sort it into categories (paper, plastic, aluminum, glass, compost, trash). They tally how many they have of every item. Then, like a class, create a graph of all of the materials that were present in their lunch.
Which material was most often found in their lunches? Was these components recyclable? If not, could they cook a solution to minimize the garbage within their lunch? Is the a place to throw recyclables and compost in their cafeteria? What can they are doing about it?
Earth Day:
To celebrate Earth Day possess a Trash-Less, Waste-Free Lunch Party! Challenge students to bring in a lunch that does not have any item that should be thrown away or perhaps tossed inside a recycle bin! Can they get it done?
2. Solar Water
Investigate renewable energy, while seeking water cycle! Students magically turn salt water into fresh water with the aid of solar energy!
How you can:
1. Pour 2 glasses of water into a large bowl.
2. Mix 3 tsp of salt in to the water. Taste the water, it’s super salty!
3. Place a small empty bowl or cup inside of the larger bowl.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and put outside under the sun.
5. Either place a rock on top of the bowl or secure the wrap having a rubberband (to help keep plastic wrap tightly secured around the bowl).
6. Keep your bowl outside for One to three days (until you get enough purified water into your normal size bowl to taste).
Compare water in the larger bowl towards the water in the smaller bowl. Do you taste the main difference?!
What’s happening?!
The sun’s rays will heat water, causing it to evaporate!
Salt is simply too heavy to evaporate; so, it stays within the larger bowl.
Condensation will occur, creating water droplets on the plastic wrap. Gravity helps make the large droplets drip in to the “collection container” (your normal size bowl) – creating freshwater!
3. Wind Powered Balloon Squid
Explore the power of air and wind energy by setting up a balloon squid to play within the swimming pool! Estimate the length you think your squid can swim. Then, measure the actual distance he travelled. Build more than one and have a balloon squid race!
Materials: balloon, snap top from water bottle, ribbon, sharpie
Click for how to instructions from Monkey See Monkey Do!
Click here to understand how to make an aura powered balloon boat!
4. Biodiversity Scavenger Hunt
Students search for abiotic and biotic factors within their backyard (or school yard). Then, according to their observations, they create a food chain or web to represent what they discovered within the ecosystem they explored! printable.
5. Blooms Recycled Paper
Making paper out of recycled newspaper and old paper scraps is a superb method to show kids how you can be greener. For many extra fun and to be even greener, add flower seeds for your paper solution. When the paper dries, kids can plant their paper watching their seeds grow.
Materials: window screen/ frame, scraps of paper, water, blender, deep container (larger than screen), flower seeds
How to:
1. Let all of your scraps soak in water overnight
2. Next, blend scraps in a blender
3. Pour the scraps out and add water inside a large, deep container
4. Add flower seeds (Marigolds work very well)
5. Dip your screen in and lift up
6. Leave paper solution on the screen to dry overnight
7. Once paper is totally dry, pull off of screen
8. Reduce your paper into squares and give to kids to plant!
Plant your seeds inside a cup, pot, or your backyard in soil. Make sure your seeds get lots of sun and water.