seven Easy Family-Friendly Ways to Celebrate Earth Day

It's almost Earth Day​,​ and although technically every day is a day on Earth and thus an Earth Day, with the holiday coming up, I thought it'd be great to go over some ways that we can give back to our planet and make Mother Earth proud.

If you prefer listening to an audio version of this list, you can check out my podcast episode Thanks, Mother Earth, from The Friend in Your Ear Pod here:
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Here are SEVEN EASY WAYS to celebrate Earth Day with your family. (Of course you can do these even if you don't have children!)
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1. Plant a tree or garden. Let's be real...kids love to get dirty. Grown-ups, too! I mean, it's really good for you on many levels to to feel the earth with your hands. It grounds you and connects you with the earth, and it's a great learning experience for children to watch things grow and to see the cycle of life from seed to fully thriving plant. If you don't have access to a yard, see if you can find a community garden in your area. Or you can do a windowsill garden. OR...you can go the hydroponic route indoors and bypass the dirt altogether, but still instill the values of growth and caretaking. I have an indoor Gardyn and my son is obsessed with seeing how much bigger the plants are each day. (If you use code: THATBLISSFULBALANCE, you can save $100 off a system of your own!)
2. Go on a nature scavenger hunt. This is really simple. You can just write up a short list of various things you might find outdoors and then go to a local park or nature reserve, or even just your own backyard, and have your kids find these various items like pinecones, daffodils, or even just rocks. Fun fact: We have a lot of rocks in our house... Here is a FREE printable I found for an Earth Day Scavenger hunt.
3. Make crafts from recycled materials. This is a great one for reusing items that would normally go out in the recycling bin like cardboard boxes, paper tubes, bottle caps, etc. You can make bird feeders, binoculars, and musical instruments. My son got the idea to make a windchime from recycled materials from a Daniel Tiger episode. He decorated a paper towel tube with paint and stickers, then we just punched some holes in bottom of the tube and tied on pieces of twine with bottle caps that we had glued to each end. Though it's not exactly water-safe, it was still a cute craft idea and I love that it inspired him to reuse these materials and give them some new life. 
4. Read books about the earth. There are a lot of children's books that teach about the importance of the Earth and how to take care of it to get kids thinking about how big the world is and how much it provides for us. Reading these books can spark some deep conversations with kids and inspire them to care more for our world, which is a beautiful thing. A book that I found that I thought was really beautiful is by Patricia McLaughlin, and it's called My Friend Earth. It has a beautiful illustrations and engaging peekaboo pages. 
5. Have a candlelight picnic. What a fun way to teach kids about using less energy while making dinnertime something novel and fun. Turn off the lights and have a family picnic by candlelight. You can eat foods that don't require cooking and give kids a demonstration of how things used to be before electricity. (Isn't it wild how new electricity really is in the grand scheme of things?) 
6. Start a compost pile. Composting is a great way to reduce waste and to create nutrient rich soil for your garden or indoor plants. You can also often contribute compost to the community if you don't have a use for it at your own home. Either way, composting is a great way to reduce your overall waste that you would otherwise be putting into the trash. And if you're not into the outdoor style of composting, you can get a more compact indoor composter. I got one last year called a Lomi, which I love because it just sits on our countertop and makes composting extremely convenient. This style is a lot faster than the traditional outdoor methods too, which makes it a bit more attractive as a teaching tool for children who have shorter attention spans (though...don't we all have shorter attention spans these days? heh...) Either way, it's really crazy to see a bucketful of waste turn into dirt in the course of hours. (Lomi is currently running a sale for Earth Day, so it's a great time to grab one if this level of ease and convenience is your vibe like it was mine...)
7. Clean up your neighborhood. Find a community cleanup event in your area or even just take it up on your own. This might be a better one for older kids, but younger kids still love to feel like helpers, and having them help pick up litter in the park (while wearing protective gloves and with supervision of course) can help to teach the importance of always putting trash where it belongs so that it doesn't cause harm to animals or the earth. 

I hope these seven ideas give some inspiration for celebrating Earth Day!