Earth Day 2015

This year for Earth Day I decided to team up with the local elementary school for an Earth Day activity. I got two second grade teachers to join in on my brown bag activity (one was a girl from my neighborhood that I know, because last year I tried to do this but didn't know any teachers...so it went nowhere. But this year it was nice having an "in").

Dick's Grocer supplied us with 100 brown Paper grocery bags and I took them into the school for kids to decorate about Earth day. Then I took them back to the grocery store to be handed out to customers with their groceries in them, for a nice community Earth Day event.

Before I passed out the brown paper bags I told an Earth Day Tale from Bali called "The Grumpy Gecko." This tale was about a gecko who wanted tiger to make the fireflies stop flashing all night. But the story went on to explain that the fireflies flashed to send on woodpecker's warning, who were passing on news about beetle, who was cleaning up after buffalo, who was helping after rain washed away the path, etc. It went to show that all the animals were working together and if the fireflies stopped then it would break that cycle and grumpy gecko wouldn't have mosquitoes to eat. Long story short. I got it from the Usborne Barefoot Book of Earth Tales. Cute book with great morals.

Firefly (butterfly pose)

woodpecker

Island: twisting and finding personal space

waterfall pose

beginning sun salutation: grateful for clean air

flower pose: a fun one

Anyway, after the story...sound effects and character voices and all, we did some memory/recall of sequence by doing some yoga poses based on the different characters and nature elements in the story. And at the end I added in Sun Salutation sequence but changed it to parts of a memory aid to help kids remember clean air, land, water and water animals, land animals and sky animals (to get back up).

Explaining the Story and recalling sequence
Nellie's little hand erasing. Ethan clinging to my leg

Ethan was correcting my telling of the story occasionally since he'd heard it four times

I had a great time, and took the kids with me to the school. The kids were shy, but had fun sitting with me and doing yoga with us all too. The teachers took some photos and said it was fun. So I think I'll probably do this each year with those same teachers, but probably even add more next year.

a few kids from Homeschool Art/Gym Co-op

We also did the Earth Tale in the Homeschool Co-op for Gym, but I told it there as we did the poses. And they did the paper bags for their art time. So fun. (In fact, it was a little funny when the other second grade teacher asked me if any of my kids were in their school and I responded..."no, we homeschool") Haha. I love bridging the community though and think it's great to get kids this fun stuff anywhere they are. Hopefully we can start a recycling club next year with an activity once a semester. Then gradually build to more frequent. I loved my recycle club I was in in fifth grade!

All in all we had a blast. And I reminded the kids that Earth day is every April on the 22nd (which is peace, peace...hand signs). The kids thought that was funny and an easy way to remember.