Materials: sentence strips, green and blue polymer clay, nail, pony beads, string or yarn
Nature Crowns
1. Take children on a walk and invite them to pick up small, light objects from the ground. (Remind them to never pull leaves or flowers off plants.)
2. Give them sentence strips, crayons, markers, and glue. Let them decorate their sentence strips with things that they love in nature. Glue the items they collected to the sentence strips and then adjust to their heads and staple to make crowns.
Earth Day Necklace
1. Give children a small ball of blue polymer clay.
2. Give them a small piece of green clay and tell them to break it into 4 or 5 little pieces.
3. Attach the green pieces to the blue ball and roll in your hands.
4. Make a hole in the center with the nail.
5. Bake in a 275 oven for 12-15 minutes.
6. String the earth ball on yarn or string to make a necklace.
Nature’s Colors
1. Give children assorted pony beads and a piece of string or yarn 20-24” long.
2. Explain that they can select a bead to represent the different things in nature that they appreciate. For example, a blue bead might remind them of the ocean, or a red bead might remind them of a cardinal. (Hint! Limit one bead per color. To make it easier to string wrap a small piece of tape around the end of the yarn.)
3. Tie the ends of the string together to make a necklace.
*Older students could write sentences about each color.
4. Ask children to describe their necklaces and explain what each color represents.
