Earth Day is April 22nd. Do you know when Earth Day started? The idea for a national day to focus on the environment came after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara. Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, announced a "national teach-in on the environment". April 22, 1970 was the first Earth Day. This date was chosen because it fell between spring break and final exams for most colleges and schools at that time.
Many of our schools are now using April 22, 2019 as a snow makeup day, so why not take advantage and do a great STEM lesson in your classroom. Below I am sharing links to different activities you can turn into lessons. Don't forget about STEM Notebooking. This is also known as the STEM journal. Below I added a few examples of journals for you to view.
Links to great activities:
STEM Day Activities for Pre-School and Elementary Students
How to Make a GAK Glacier – Science at Sea– Investigation: Bring together the good old combo of borax and glue and observe how it flows and breaks. Turns out, it behaves much the same way as a glacier, so you can teach students about Earth’s ever-changing ice masses.
Extract DNA from Spinach!– Investigation: Exactly what it sounds like. Get a close look at the genetic material of spinach, no microscope necessary!
Earth Day Activities and Ideas This site provides free public Earth Day games, some Earth Week lesson plans to go along with those games, and a wide variety of curated activities and resources.
Free Online Earth Day Games Deliver engaging educational gaming experience to your classroom with these free games. Students and teachers can create accounts using their Google Log-ins. Teachers can make playlists for their students to play educational science games.
Journal Samples
