Inside: Use this Be Kind to Earth Pact to help kids be kind to Earth and learn ways they can help protect the planet.
When I was a kid, Earth Day wasn’t a thing.
The first official Earth Day started years before I was born in 1970, yet we didn’t learn about it or talk about it or acknowledge it.
It wasn’t until I went to college and majored in Environmental Studies and focused on Environmental Education at the epicenter of the Earth Day movement that I really began to appreciate Earth Day and how to celebrate it with kids.
And now with worldwide climate change, there’s never been a more important time to help kids learn how to take care of our planet.
We can show kids how they can be kind to our earth more often. And we can empower them to know there are little things even they can do that will have a significant impact.
We can help kids understand their role and their responsibility to the home we live on.
We can encourage them to “speak for the trees” like the Lorax implored us to, and speak for the animals while we’re at it.
We can show them how to reduce and reuse and recycle the resources they use on a daily basis.
And we can help them write out ways they can show kindness to the planet and help them take the Be Kind to Earth Pact so every day can be Earth Day.
More Earth Day Resources:
We can do lots of things to celebrate Earth Day like making an Earth Day Craft or playing Bingo with these free printable Earth Day Bingo Cards, or connecting Earth Day to kindness.
I am Kind to Earth Emergent Reader
Kindness Earths Craft and Write
Here are a few of our favorite Earth Day books:
Don’t Throw That Away (Flip Book)
How to Help the Earth by the Lorax
And we use this Be Kind to Earth Day Pact.
How to Use the Be Kind to Earth Day Pact:
1. Download the version you wish to use: color or black and white and early elementary school lines or older elementary school lines (download below).
2.Talk to kids about what a pact is (pledge, promise) and connect it to other pledges or promises they make (Pledge of Allegiance, Scout Promise, etc.)
3.Talk about why it’s important to be Kind to Earth (it’s our home, we only have one planet, we have to take care of the animals, if we run out of clean water what will we drink?, etc.)
4. If you use the black and white version, kids can color in their pact. Make sure to offer them skin color crayons.
5. Brainstorm different ways they can be kind to Earth. Here are just a few:
- turn off lights before you leave the house
- walk rather than ride in a car/carpool
- Use a reusable water bottle
- use a lunchbox rather than paper bag
- use reusable bags rather than ziplocs
- pick up trash
- recycle aluminum cands
- turn off water when not using it
- plant a tree
- use both sides of the paper
- join a beach, park, or community clean up day
- wear your pjs a few nights before you wash them
- donate toys, books, and clothes you no longer need
- borrow books from the library instead of buying one
- take a hike with a trash bag and collect trash
- take reusable bags with you when you go into a store
- take shorter showers/shallow bath
- recycle all the junk mail you get
- don’t use plastic straws and use metal straws instead
6. Encourage students to write a list of the things they want to start doing to be kind to our planet.
7. Print off the pact you want to use (colored or black and white so they color it) and read it together:
Dear Earth, I promise,
To treat you with more kindness.
I will protect you with each act,
This is my Be Kind to Earth pact.
Remind them that even though Earth Day is April 22nd, every day is really Earth Day.
Download the Earth Day Kindness Pact here.
Michelle McCabe says
COuld you please e-mail me the Earth Day kindness bundle. I am so sorry, but I think it is our district’s locks that won’t let it open and it is so cute!
My e-mail is:
mmccabe@troy30c.org
Thank you!