Earth Day

5 great books for Earth Day

Earth Day is April 22 - it's a great chance for kids of all ages to learn about how they can care for the Earth, small things that make a difference, and the importance of helping in the community. momstown's got 5 great books to help engage kids on Earth Day, and every day!

Visit our Arts & Crafts site for great Earth Day crafts, too!

earth day books for kids

Emeraldalicious by Victoria Kann

When Pinkalicious and Peter decide to visit their favorite park, they find that it's no longer their favorite place—the park is now filled with stinky trash! So, Pinkalicious decides to make an extra-special wand out of a stick and some flowers. Now whenever Pinkalicious makes a wish, adds a little love, and recites a pinkatastic rhyme, something amazing happens: It's pinkerrific magic!

Earth Day, Birthday by Maureen Wright

It's April 22, and Lion and his friends want to plant trees, recycle bottles, and have fun on Earth Day. But not Monkey. He wants to celebrate his birthday. Can he convince the other animals that it really is his birthday? Violet Kim's humorous artwork, rendered in paper, photographs, and colored pencil, highlight the sunny, friendly world of the animals.

A Leaf can Be by Laura Purdie Salas

A leaf can be a . . .
Shade spiller
Mouth filler
Tree topper
Rain stopper

Find out about the many roles leaves play in this poetic exploration of leaves throughout the year.

The Berenstain Bears Go Green by Jan & Mike Berenstain

The Berenstain Bears live in a wonderful place filled with green grass, blue skies, and lots of furry friends. But on a fishing trip at the creek, the Bear family discovers that the town dump is overflowing. It's spilling garbage into the water! Can the Berenstain Bears find a pollution solution before their beloved county is filled with garbage?

Biscuit's Earth Day by Alyssa Capucilli

Join Biscuit as he helps take care of our green world. From planting seeds to cleaning up, Biscuit's celebration is an exciting adventure for Earth Day and for every day!

Thanks to Amazon for book descriptions.

Do your kids have a favourite Earth Day book?

Posted by Teacher Mom on 04/05/2013 - 10:05

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Earth Day Bird Feeder

earth day bird feeder

Backyard birdfeeders made of natural materials was an inspiration to draw more birds to our yard this year. Wanting a quick and easy idea, we decided to go for all natural ingredients.

momstown had heard of many feeders using peanut butter as the base, but with an allergic chold it wasn’t usable for us. Instead we used plain on butter to stick the birdseed to.

•    Pinecone
•    Butter/Margarine (or peanut butter)
•    Birdseed (sold anywhere, Dollar store even)
•    Ribbon or string for hanging

Cut the string to the length needed to hang and tie onto the pinecone. Do this first before spreading butter otherwise it’s almost impossible to do it later.

Spread the butter onto the pinecone very liberally. It needs a good coat and inbetween the pinecone branches, this way it will trap more birdseed. Spreading the butter is great fun for the younger crowd, there’s no real way to do this wrong so let them spread independently!

Sprinkle birdseed on a flat surface, like a pie plate, and roll the buttered pinecone in it until well covered. Make sure the birdseed is well pressed onto the pinecone.

Hang your pinecone birdfeeder in a spot your child thinks will draw lots of birds. Being able to see the feeder from the window will add to the delight, especially from the breakfast table!

This bird seed cookie recipe is another fun way to create a a bird feeder too!

Posted by momstown mama on 04/02/2013 - 17:33

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Earth Hour Ideas and Activities for Kids

Will YOU turn off your lights this weekend for Earth Hour?

momstown moms and kids will be turning off their lights and unplugging this weekend for Earth Hour.

Earth Hour Activities for Kids

Earth Hour began as a small World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) event in Sydney, Australia. In 2007, 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. The movement was quickly picked up, and the following year was an even bigger event.

In that short time over 50 million people had become aware of Earth Hour, and turned out their lights to save energy and spread awareness in 2008. Even some of the world's most recognizable buildings were dark for Earth Hour, including Rome's Coliseum, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square, New York. In 2012, Earth Hour cemented itself as the largest voluntary action for the environment, with more than 6950 cities and towns across 152 countries and territories taking part.

You can help make a difference by reducing your energy consumption for Earth Hour in March, between 8:30 and 9:30 pm, while taking note of how much you consume, and how you can make changes every day to help reduce climate change for future generations. Earth Hour and Earth Day are perfect times to open the dialogue with your children. What can they do to help the Earth? In addition to unplugging chargers, clocks, computers, lights and turning down the thermostat, find other ways that you can help to be eco-aware in your home.

momstown has found lots of great ideas to help with this conversation and inspire our kids to do their part for the environment.

There is no better time than Earth Hour (and Earth Day on April 22nd) to spend some quality family time creating crafts that help encourage the conversation about our earth, recycling and endangered animals. We have crafts that reuse items from around the house, create the earth out of pizza cardboard and even create our planet with your kid's feet!

Young kids can work on the letter "O" with this amazingly simple "On/Off" Switch craft, teaching not only about early reading, but small ways in which they can help be eco-aware in their own home. Planet Forward also has a great lightbulb craft for kids to get "turned on" to the environment and saving energy.

on off switch craft for Earth Day

Since our kids will likely be asleep, how about turning off your lights twice? Create a "kid-friendly" hour like Caroline Fernandez of the Yummy Mummy Club will do. She uses this opportunity to talk about the environment and even extends the hour into a full weekend including movie time to watch "eco-conscious" movies for kids.

Older kids might be ready to make a committment to help out by reducing their own footprint. Earthhour.org has some great online games, virtual lightswitches and kid-friendly information about . Our friend, 10 year old Eco-Blogger Hannah Alper, has also created a great pledge for kids- download it on her blog. She recommends spending lots of family time talking about what you can do to help the earth, in your house.

Whether it's gazing at the stars, having games night, crafts by candlelight or even a night alone in the dark with your spouse, use this chance to talk to your kids about the environment and help ensure that the next generation will continue to work towards making our earth stronger.

Posted by momstown team on 03/20/2013 - 09:41

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Alphabet Craft: j is for juice

It wasn't hard to convince my son to do a "j" craft...since his name starts with "J"!

At five years old, he knows his alphabet, but right now he is really just learning the difference between when to use the upper case and lower case versions of the letters. It's an interesting exercise to work with your child on when to use each one. We often play- "Guess the Case" around the house. "Is the dog's name captital or not?" "Is your toy car a capital "c" or not?"

We loved to come up with things that start with "j" for this craft... while he would have been happy doing "jellybeans", we wanted to use "junk" to make this a recycled craft as well!

Sifting through our blue bins, we came up with a perfect "j" word... "juice"!

First, we wrote a big bubble "j" on our paper!

j is for juice craft

Next, we cut up a juice box so that it was flat.

We clued the juice boxes until it filled in the "j" and made a circle for the dot!

j is for juice

j is for juice craft

momstown is super keen on early literacy and we run our Alphabet Play program in every regional chapter monthly. Come on out and join the fun! See some Alphabet Play fun here with P is for Poppy from momstown Mississauga, J is for Jaguar with momstown Central Alberta or L is for LadyBug from momstown Kitchener Waterloo.

Posted by momstown team on 11/07/2012 - 12:27

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Plasticine Tree inspired by Barbara Reid

Our momstown monet program is designed for budding artists - check out this amazing creation inspired by Barbara Reid's plasticine illustrations! Just in time for Earth Day, we celebrate the Spring tree with this creative activity.

plasticine spring tree

What you need:

Canvas (3 for $1 a local dollar store)
Rainbow pack of plasticine (dollar store)

plasticine spring tree

Our little artists watched the Barbara Reid videos on her site and watched some great tutorials about trees (they loved the pussywillow one). Then they sat and looked out the window and talked about what the spring trees looked like.

plasticine spring tree

They covered the canvas with a plasticine background and we talked about the horizon.

plasticine spring tree

Then our mini Monets got busy creating their trees. Plasticine adheres naturally to canvas, and it's an easy medium to manipulate and change.

Picture a Tree is one of Barbara Reid's latest illustrated stories, and it's a perfect inspiration for your young artist to try out a new way of making a picture - they really are masterpieces!

plasticine spring tree