Earth Day Collaboration for Your ENTIRE ECE Classroom! FREEBIES, too!

EARTH DAY ON THE HORIZON!

What better way can you celebrate Earth Day than to UBBER 'recycle' in honor of going green? Today's whole article is the ultimate 'recycle' as I am going to reshare one of my favorite Author-Illustrator ECE school visits!!! I'd LUV LUV LUV for this idea to get some additional viewership and some cloning and replication from this extra exposure. It is the ultimate of happy and inexpensive experiences for your Early Childhood classroom: truly OPEN-ENDED/PROCESS Art! 

It all started with my whole-school sing-a-long at a VPK (that's: Voluntary PreKindergarden) down here in Florida. {We are right now in real time, in the midst of preparing for our Snowbird departure to our northern haven along Green Bay, hence the 'other' motivation to recycle.} 

I launched our time together a couple of years ago by sharing our 'Earth' a.k.a. the pool noodle that was the basis for our singing on that special morning. 

After the whole group experience that included sharing my song, "Care of the Earth" I got to lead a genuine 'Artist in the Classroom' extravaganza. They supplied the scissors, glue sticks and a big slice of white 'table paper' for the base of our collaboration. I supplied the tissue paper and had the camera ready to document all of the fun! Let the artists begin! GO!!!

This was a classroom of mature four year old children with a couple of early fives at the fringe. You can see that I gave each child a mixture of both the blue and green tissue paper. They worked diligently to create the snippets for our 'map' that would become our collaborative globe sculpture, within the pool noodle. 

As I wandered through the room, I noticed as always, that there was quite a continuum of capability for the skill at hand: SCISSORS manipulation. As you will see, there were children who were able to cut right through the tissue as though it were warm butter while others ended up with a combo of tearing/wrenching of the tissue with their scissors. Truly for this collaboration ALL manner of tissue paper bits were equally welcome in the final 'product' and gave everyone an opportunity to hone their cutting skills. 

***Note-to-DIYers. I 'secured' the pool noodle into it's happy-permanent-circle shape with a discarded, UPcycled golf club grip from hubby and some super glue. I bet a dowel rod would work? Get creative.

After all of that hard work with the scissors, it was truly time for the *FUN* of the gluing. All hands on deck! Look at all of that fine motor control! Tripod, three finger scrunching and maneuvering. Such a natural way to prepare fingers for the future fine motor skill of writing. 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<DRUMROLL>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

BEHOLD THE FINAL COLLABORATION

Seeing all of those happy hands at work called for a 'posed' shot. 

Talk about giggles galore! 

That was some of the best fun of the whole morning: 

Me up on a chair for the bird's eye view, posing 'hands' and capturing our incredible sculpture in one snap! 

While you're out this spring, gather some earth 'goodies' and they can become an Earth Day shadow box. These boxes were on display during my field trip and presentations in Reggio Emilia, Italy. THE professional opportunity of a lifetime. YES! REGGIO! Dial back in time to see those articles. 

Another idea for your celebration would be to make a natural 'mandala' from gathered Earth bits. 

Here's an example of one I made following a fall walk.

Yes. The backdrop is my yoga mat. 

Ephemeral.  

Building rock cairns is another of my favorite outdoor activities. These are ones we built on the Mediterranean while on the Italian portion of my tour to four of our US Army bases. We built these right outside Camp Darby, very near Pisa Italy. Finding the right 'quote' is one of my happy past-times for my photos. I'm getting ready to debut a slideshare of some of my favorite quotes that have been here on the blog. I hope to have that ready for Easter morning! We shall see. 

Here's another earlier article I had here, focused on Art Projects from UPcycled pieces and parts. 

***If you're looking for the ULTIMATE of UPcycled projects to honor the Earth, you'll need to return to this INCREDIBLE professional mural of bits and pieces on display at an Ohio Elementary School. 

As with the majority of my pinboard collections, they are based on my original songs for children. 

Yes. I have a whole collection for "Care of the Earth." 

Click the pic to go to that specific collection. 

Click picture for my pinboard, "Care of the Earth" with 592 Resources already on file

Speaking of INCREDIBLE RESOURCES for Earth Day...... there have been a couple of recent articles at our collaborative blog, "PreK+K Sharing" that you really must go see. Terri has absolutely breath-taking photographs of the release of their kindergarten butterflies into the world. Her article is entitled, "Last Child in the Woods." 

Click the picture to go to Terri's article at the collaborative and see what these Kinders are up to! 

As fantastic as Terri's article is, let me give you a head's up that you'll want to allow sufficient time to see the collection of resources that Carolyn has gathered in her article. One of her amazing contributions is a 'PREZI" of resources to use at your fingertips. Talk about the perfect combination of technology and teacher expertise plus enthusiasm! Look no further! It's FREEEEEEE! She has gathered all kinds of FREEBIES for Earth Day! 

Click the pic to go to an AMAZING set of FREEBIE Resources for Earth Day gathered by Carolyn at "PreK+K Sharing" 

For one full year, I had an on-going series of articles here for Fine Motor Friday. 
Here is the golden anniversary article that walks you back through all 50 installations. 



I know. I know. If you're new here, I'm a little hard to figure out. 
I LUV LUV LUV all things 'Children's Art' but I am a music lady first. 
I have an entire album of songs, commissioned by Zaner-Bloser on Fine Motor Motivation. 

It is available for purchase at my website or Teachers Pay Teachers!

Yes! I LUV LUV LUV to pin. 

I think it is probably one of my biggest contributions to ECE. 

I am nearing my 150,000th follower there! 

Would you be today's helper and pin from this article? 

It's how many find me in cyber-town! 

I am soooooooooooo grateful for every pin! 

Thanks!