Article written by Betsy S. Franz, all rights reserved.
"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We understand only what we are taught."- Baba Dioum, Senegalese Poet
What's the best way to help the environment? Get people up close and personal with nature so they will learn to appreciate what it is we are all trying so hard to protect. With that is mind, here are 10 Earth Day activities to help share your passion for the planet.
Most of these activities were written with children in mind, but you may be surpised to learn how much fun they are for adults, too! In fact, many of them are great fun for adult Earth Day celebrations or for any eco-minded couples. So in honor of Earth Day, Get outside and explore!
1)
Have a scavenger hunt in your yard (can also be carried out at a local park): Wake up early and take a quiet walk around your yard with a notebook in hand. Look for at least ten wonderful, curiosities of nature that aren’t easily noticed and make a list of them. Perhaps you will see some caterpillars dining on a host plant or a beautiful spider web stretched across two tree limbs or a tiny little tree frog hidden in the leaves of a flower. Make a list of your finds (but not their locations). Give a copy of the list to each of your children or other participants and have a scavenger hunt in your yard. Whoever finds all the items first wins!
2)
Play Got W.O.N.!: Similar to the scavenger hunt above, in this activity, each participant is sent out into the yard to see how many Wonders of Nature (W.O.N) that they can find in an allotted time. At the signal of the timekeeper, each participant heads out looking for wonders. When they find something of interest, they yell “Got W.O.N.”, and the name of the Wonder of Nature that they have discovered. An example would be “Got W.O.N. – Hawk feather!” or “Got W.O.N. – monarch chrysalis.” At the end of the allotted time, the person with the most Wonders is the Winner!
3)
Get silly: Play animal charades. Have the participants act out their favorite animal and see if the other players can guess what they are. Does all of that wing flapping and running around look more like a butterfly or a bird? If you want to be really specific, try to guess the species, too. Unlike typical charades, animal noises are allowed! For adults only, get inspired with some
Green Porno by the beautiful and talented Isabella Rossellini
4)
Get sensitive: Use all of your senses to explore your habitat. Start with your eyesight and have each participant mention several things that they see in their surroundings. Then have them close their eyes and mention things that they hear. Do you hear birds, bees, hummingbirds? Next, try smell. If you grow flowers or herbs, be sure and share those wonderful aromas with them. For touch, have them close their eyes and guide them to touch various textures, such as tree bark or grass. Can they guess what they are touching? If you grow your own fruit or vegetables, include whatever is ripe (and clean) in your sensory explorations.
5)
Share the wonders of your wildlife garden: Do you already have a wildlife friendly landscape? Then why not share it with others? Invite a friend over and take them for a walk through your yard. While they are enjoying the visiting birds and butterflies, collect seeds and cuttings of wildlife friendly plants to share with them. Print out information sheets from your computer about what types of wildlife they attract. Give them the “wildlife garden starter kit” as a gift.
6)
ID some wildlife: Pack up your digital cameras and visit a local birding spot, park or nature preserve. Take photos of as many different birds and other critters as you can. When you get back home, see how many of the species you can identifying by using bird guides, such as the
Silbey Guide to Birds
, or online resources such as those listed on the
Take Care of Your Share website.
7)
Start a wildlife garden: If you don’t already have a wildlife friendly landscape, start one! All you have to do is provide the four basic necessities for wildlife: food, water, safety and places to raise their young. There are many wonderful books and online sites available to help get you started. Here is one of our
favorites sites and, of course,
our favorite book.
8)
Start a wildlife habitat journal: Keeping a wildlife habitat journal is a great way to learn about the wildlife in your yard. You will learn landscape basics such as which plants are most favored. But a journal will also allow you to better monitor the exciting progress of the entire butterfly life cycle from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and will let you know when to re-hang feeders for your visiting hummingbirds. Here’s a
great article about the topic and there is much more information in the book shown above.
9)
Start a wildlife life list: For birders, a
life list is a cumulative record of bird species that have been positively identified and seen by individual birders. In our landscape, we have broadened our life list to include other species. Here
is a link to our birding life list.
10)
Get Certified: If you do already have a wildlife friendly garden, get it certified. There are several programs that allow you to get your wildlife friendly landscape certified. One of the most well known is the
National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat Program
0 comments:
Post a Comment