🌎 8 Earth Day Student Activities for a Brighter Tomorrow 

Turn up the love for Mother Earth!  

Use this activity to show your students how they can get involved in sustainability initiatives that protect our planet.  

Our Earth Day Activity Wheel features eight meaningful activities that encourage students to think about and discuss ways they can support the natural environment.

Each wheel section features a different activity exploring topics like renewable resources, ecosystems, sustainability and recycling, and more! 

We developed these environmentally-focused activities using Harvard professor and researcher Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences—ways to nurture various approaches to a task, depending on how individuals best process information:

1. Musical intelligence
2. Visual-spacial intelligence
3. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
4. Interpersonal intelligence
5. Linguistic intelligence
6. Logical-mathematical intelligence
7. Naturalistic intelligence
8. Intrapersonal intelligence

🌱 How to Play (+ Scaffolding and Extension Tips) 

A team of dedicated, experienced educators created this resource for students to work on independently or as a class or small group. 

There are two versions of this activity available, indicated by the shape symbols at the top right of the wheel: 

• Square – Language and activities are recommended for upper grades
• Triangle – Language and activities are recommended for lower grades

Print your level-appropriate activity wheel and let students work through each activity at their leisure in the lead-up to Earth Day. 

Alternatively, set aside a lesson to explore Earth Day as a class and let students choose their preferred activity to complete as an exit ticket. 

Reinforce your small group and full-class lessons by taking these activities further: 

🗣️ Turn & Talk 

Invite students to pair up with someone in the seat nearest to them for a 5-minute Turn & Talk. Keep students engaged and on task by directing them to focus on a specific topic or letting them freely discuss the content. Use this Turn & Talk session to encourage students to make space for each other by actively listening, asking questions, and practicing empathy. 

📖 Write It, Do It

Keep this activity going longer by asking students to write in their journals about the environmental awareness activities they completed today. Have students share their favorite activities with a partner and brainstorm ways to use what they learned to be more active in conservation and environmental activism every day. 

Get our 10 Best Scaffolding Strategies here! 

Easily Prepare This Resource for Your Students

Choose the activity wheel best suited to your students’ levels of understanding:

• Square – language and activities are recommended for upper grades
• Triangle – language and activities are recommended for lower grades

Use the dropdown icon on the Download button to choose between Google Slides or PDF versions (black and white or color) of this resource.

♻️ Sustainability

Display this activity to your class using a digital whiteboard or share it in Google Classroom for virtual learning students.   

Print on cardstock for added durability and slip it in a clear sleeve to use over and over again. 

And please remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle! 

Learn more about Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences research.  

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Check out other ways to introduce your students to environmentalism: 

teaching resource Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint – Poster and Worksheet Explore how to reduce your carbon footprint with this poster and accompanying comprehension worksheet. teaching resource My Promise to the Earth - Flipbook Template Make a promise to protect the planet with a printable Earth Day flip book. teaching resource What are Natural Resources - Instructional Slide Deck Explore natural resources, where they come from, and how we use them with an instructional slide deck.