The Pa-Paw Patch: Earth Week

Friday, April 25, 2014

Earth Week - April 21-25

This week at The Pa-Paw Patch, we extended Earth Day into a whole week and learned all about taking care of our planet. We did special activities each day to learn about different ways to help our environment and had a lot of fun doing it too! We also used this week to kickoff our playground "redo," meaning we're working towards including more natural play areas into our playgrounds!

We were closed Monday as part of our Easter break, but on Tuesday we celebrated actual Earth Day by planting three new trees on our playgrounds! We chose a maple and two river birches to provide neat leaves, bark, and limbs for the children to explore. The kids got to watch the planting and learned about the trees' roots and limbs. Then they got to help water them!

On Wednesday, we recycled old newspaper into new paper planting cups! We soaked newspaper overnight, ground it up in the food processor, and let the kids mash it into muffin tin cups to create their own planting cup!

On Thursday, we planted a wildflower garden! Ms. Melanie's husband, Tim, came and tilled up a section of ground for us, and every child got to sprinkle wildflower seeds on our garden, which will attract butterflies and hummingbirds. The children will be able to explore insects, plants, life cycles, and nature in their new garden!

On Friday, we made Lorax planters and planted a sunflower seed in the paper planting cups we made on Tuesday. A great ending to a fun-filled week!

Here's a sampling of other art and activities done in our classrooms this week:

The garden sensory tub - Ever class got one for the week.

The 3's inspecting a mat for the homeless made out of plastic grocery bags by the ladies of Plateau United Methodist Church. What a way to recycle plastic bags for a good cause!