Earth Day! 5 STEAM Activities You Can Do with Your Children at Home this Earth Day (or Week!)

It’s Earth Day today, and it is a timely reminder for us to care about our planet and the environment we live in! Habits start young, and now that we are all staying at home and spending more time in parks, it’s a good time to let your little explorers learn more about our Mother Nature and cultivate a love for it!

1. Build Something with Recyclable Materials

Conduct your own STEAM session with your children by giving them a maker’s challenge by getting them to create something with recyclable materials such as toilet rolls, plastic bottles, plastic bags, newspapers and magazines! Some ideas:

A. Build a stationery box to tidy up the messy table using toilet rolls or plastic bottles

B. Make a stool that can be sat on safely using just newspapers and tapes

C. Create an artwork about Earth using old magazines

D. Construct the tallest and most stable building with a maximum of 10 pieces of newspaper

The list is not exhaustive! Let your imagination and creativity run wild! This is a good way to introduce interesting ways of recycling while unleashing your children’s creativity! Remember, a big part of STEAM is to value the process of learning as much as the outcome of learning!

If you need more ideas, check out the DIY plant pot we did in a plastic bottle last week!

2. Listen to free audiobooks on Audible or Read e-books on Epic!

Audible and Epic! Reading app are giving free subscriptions during this stay-home period, so take this opportunity to access the huge library of books available and learn about planet Earth!

3. Grow a Tomato plant

We’ve always loved getting our little explorers to grow their own plant. Like taking care of a pet, it teaches values such as ownership and responsibility, on top of cultivating a love for our environment.

Plus, if you have Primary school-going children, they are probably learning about the topic of plants (life cycle of plants, conditions seeds need to germinate etc) in their Science classes, and this is a great way to put all these learning into practice! Not to mention, if everything goes well, they are going to reap good harvest and get to taste it (literally!).

It’s a simple activity and if you already have a small garden at home, you should have the necessary materials to grow your own Tomato plant. Watch our recent video tutorial here:

P.S. If you do not have ready seeds at home, check out Edible Garden City’s recent video on how to start from a tomato in your refrigerator.

4. Watch a documentary on Netflix or Youtube

Now that Netflix is sharing some of its educational documentaries on Youtube for free access, there are plenty of options that cover topics from endangered animals to global warming.

These are some of our favourite titles:

A. BBC Planet Earth Series

B. Chasing Coral

C. Chasing Ice

Let us know what are yours!

5. Scavenger Hunt at the Park (or out of your window!)

Simply look out of the windows or the next time you visit a neighbourhood park, get your little explorers to find at least 5 different types of leaves, flowers or even trees! If you are curious about these plants, check out NParks’ website to learn intricate details – from their names to when they were planted!

We have created an Earth Day Bingo for your little explorers! Download it and you can use to challenge them to become Green Rangers and live every day like Earth Day! Meanwhile, stay home and practise good hygiene and social distancing whenever you are out of the house!