Earth Day Activities with Water Beads

This post was contributed by Sarah of Little Bins For Little Hands.

Use Water Beads for Fun Earth Day Activities!

Hooray for the planet Earth! Each year, Liam understands a little bit more about the world around him and is a little bit more eager to learn about the world. Earth Day is a really neat day, and although we focus on it as a special day once a year, I try to stress about the importance of taking care of the Earth every day. This year I made a special Earth sensory bin to highlight some of the important elements of the planet!

Water Beads are pretty cool and easy to find in the floral section of most craft stores. They are technically vase fillers but also make awesome sensory bin fillers too! I chose a package of blue and green water beads to make this Earth sensory bin for some Earth Day activities and play. Liam loves to share that the Earth is made up of land and water, the green is the land and the blue is the water. He picked up on the colors of the water beads right away!

I mixed in many of the different forms of nature that are found on Earth. We used trees, shells, fish, animals, birds, and different types of sea life to talk about the Earth. I also included a small scoop, a mason jar to fill and dump, and a fun small plastic globe shaped container (to make his own mini Earth).

Although this is a great sensory bin for independent play, we played with it together so we could talk about nature and the planet Earth! I like to encourage curiosity, wonder and conversation as often as I can to get him thinking and remembering! I placed all the different elements in mixed up ways to show him that we all live together to make planet Earth the place that it is today! We all have to work together to keep it nice and safe too!

As an additional activity, I gave him a tray to sort out the different living things. I didn’t give much direction because I wanted to continue our conversation on where different things live or where different things grow. He noticed right away that the turtle goes in the water and on land, so you see he placed the turtle in the middle. He had a lot of great thoughts and questions about the different animals which was the whole point of the activity!

Fun Earth Day Talking Points for Preschoolers

Liam loves to talk and learns well by listening to what we talk about while we play! I kept it very simple so he would stay interested. I heard a lot of wow’s and cool’s when I brought up a new thought.

1. Most of the Earth is made up of water, and it is salty.
2. It is called the Blue Planet.
3. Earth has a moon named Luna.
4. Earth is always spinning but very very slowly. When we face the sun we have day and as it spins it gets darker for night time.
5. The Earth travels around the sun making a year. It takes 365 days to go around.
6. All living things need water to grow.
7. The largest animal is the Blue Whale.
8. Some animals are endangered which means there are only a few left so we have to be careful of them.
9. Nature is made up of plants, animal, land forms like mountains but not people (humans).
10. Trees keep the air clean for us.
11. The Earth is made up of different parts and we live on the crust (like the crust of bread it surrounds and covers the Earth). It is very strong.

More Earth Day Activities on Pinterest

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Hope you enjoyed these simple Earth Day activities and found some new ideas to talk with your children about the Earth!

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