Earth Day Fun: Truffula Trees!

So when I started the discussion about Earth day with my preschool munchkins, I was excited to see where it would go! For the most part, they had no idea what I was talking about! 

Great huh? YES!! Because that just made me more motivated to teach them about Earth Day and the importance of taking care of our planet.

Their little faces were glued to me as soon as I said the words: “Our Earth is in trouble”. The room was filled with silence as their eyes widened as I tried my best to explain how and why the earth is in trouble and what we can do to help. 

When I get attentiveness like I did this morning, it reminds me why I love what I do. Teaching, training, manipulating (whatever you wish to call it) young little minds takes a lot of heart (and yes, patience), but it’s so worth it.

I grabbed their attention by reading the book “The Lorax” . It is a long book and I knew many of them had probably already seen the new movie, so I was ready to paraphrase paragraphs and pages if I had to…but I didn’t! 

I put on my actress hat, and made sure I was very animated (I had an extra cup of coffee that morning) to be able to keep them interested and engaged—and it worked!

They seemed to take a big interest in the Truffula trees. But who doesn’t love them? They are gorgeous!

There were tons of art activity ideas online and on Pinterest on Truffula Trees but with my center time constraints and the fact that some of these munchkins have a very teeny tiny attention span, I had to do something fairly quick and easy. All I needed was paper, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, colorful yarn and glue! What preschool classroom doesn’t have all that shoved inside the art closet??

So I put it all in a table and let them go at it!

And here is the project we ended up with:

LOVELY TRUFFULA TREES!