Earth Day Collage and Brainstorm

We've continued to explore Earth Day this week and the idea of taking care of our Earth. 

We enjoyed creating this Earth Day collage and then brainstorming ideas for how to care for Earth. We used paper from our scrap paper collection to create a torn paper collage and silver permanent marker to write our ideas around the world. 

Our inspiration came from this cool collage created at I Heart Crafty Things. They used magazine pieces to create their collage. I always keep the scraps from our projects when we use card stock and scrap book paper, so for ease of this project I decided to reuse these pieces. I also wanted to add in a piece about brainstorming some ideas for taking care of Earth, so we used black construction paper for the background and we used a silver sharpie marker to write. We added some of the stars from Big Brother's birthday party decorations around the outside. Before we started I traced a large circle onto sheets of black construction paper and we used glue sticks to fill in the circles. 

We started the collage when we had some friends over for a play date and they joined in too. Big Brother got started but decided he would rather play and wound up needing another day to finish the collage. He was much more focused on the second day. 

What's great about torn paper collages is that even little hands can do it with minimal help. Big Brother experimented with ripping the paper into different sized pieces. Like our Glowing Earth Lantern, I imagined that we might make the Earth look realistic and put out a photograph of the Earth to guide us, but Big Brother liked placing the pieces where he wanted them to go. 

One of our play date friends was a little older than Big Brother and also created a collage. He added some glow in the dark glitter glue to his collage as well. 

When each child finished their collage I asked them some ways they could care for the Earth and wrote their ideas with silver permanent marker around the world. 

To help Big Brother with some brainstorming we connected to some of the books we've been reading  this week. The list included:

The Earth and I by Frank Asch

The Berenstain Bears Don't Pollute (Anymore) by Jan and Stan Berenstain

Recycle! by Gail Gibbons

Earthdance by Joanne Ryder

Earthsong by Sally Rogers

The one he connected with the most was the Berenstain Bears story as it gave some very specific examples of how to care for our Earth. 

It surprised me at the end of the week to realize that we never posted any of our Easter crafts, and have spent an equal amount of time thinking and talking about Earth Day. Although we love Easter and enjoy our specific family traditions, it's also never too early to be helping the next generation to start thinking about our role on planet Earth.