Earth Day Fun for Tweens and Teens

Love your Mother - Mother Earth that is! With Earth Day just a few days away, I have compiled some great resources, activity ideas and videos to help you and your kids get involved, give back to Mother Earth, and make some changes all year long.

The #1 way to educate and inspire kids is by setting an example ourselves. By making conservation and environmental issues part of our daily lives, kids will naturally learn. However, there are plenty of great resources on the web to help make this process even more fun!

• Going Green: A Kid’s Handbook to Saving the Planet - Geared towards kids in grades 4-8, it is a guide to saving the environment, including explanations of ecological issues and projects.
• Go Green with your Kids - a guide to incorporating green habits for each stage of childhood.
• Teaching Kids to Go Green - How about Green Schools? Here’s another one on environmentally friendly schools.
• The Our Planet MySpace page is full of great quizzes, video and information for teens and families.
• EarthdayNetwork has a very colorful interactive site for helping kids calculate their ecological footprint with Bobby Bigfoot.
• Whole Foods Market takes it to the community in series of videos and user submissions in their Whole Earth Generation collection at YouTube.
• Network Earth Day has some teen produced videos that will inspire!
• The EPA has a kids club web site with information and activities on a full range of topics. Visit the EPA Air Now site for kids activities on air quality. Or visit another part of their site to learn about household chemicals.
• The American Museum of Natural History features Ology - a kid friendly trek into biodiversity - way cool!
• EcoKids is another site full of games, activities, homework helpers, and ideas for getting kids involved in their environment.
• Save the oceans with the National Resource Defense Councils Make Waves site - plenty of kid friendly fun.
• The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has a site called EEK - environmental education for kids - another fun, interactive, educational site.
• The Department of Energy has teamed up with Disney and their movie Ratatouille on their kids page about energy conservation.
• Every day is Earth Day at Treehugging Family. Check out the daily dose of resources.
• The National Wildlife Federation has a variety of eco-friendly magazines for kids of all ages - Ranger Rick and Your Big Back Yard are the most popular.
• NIEHS has coloring pages, games, activities, jokes, and stories for helping kids get the message about the environment.
• How about an Earth Day Drop Quote puzzle and Earth Day word search for the older kids and a coloring page, and more Earth Day activities for kids of all ages at Printables4Kids?
• Family Fun, Sparkplugging’s Kids Activities and Kaboose have crafts, projects, printables, makeables and more on a variety of eco-friendly topics.
• William the Garbage Truck is a friendly new book aimed at getting younger kids interested in their environment - perfect for those younger siblings.

Remind your kids that there are some really easy changes you as a family can make to help the environment like:

• Turn off all electronics when they are not being used.
• Take shorter and cooler showers.
• Walk, ride bikes or take public transportation when possible.
• Car pool to sports practices and other activities when possible.
• Organize daily errands to minimize running all over town.
• Recycle paper, glass and plastic.
• Purchase eco-friendly office and paper products when possible. (The Green Office has all eco-friendly paper on sale this month at 10% off)

There are so many other ways to get kids involved, but setting the example yourselves and being involved with your kids are the two easiest!

Image courtesy of Printables4Kids