The Wild View from My Window
I decided to have a chat with my kids about what activities we can do at home on Earth Day 22nd April to celebrate the wild world we love and we quickly came up with a list. We got started with activity number one right away – taking in the wild views from our bedroom windows and transforming them onto paper in a big collage.
Our Garden
We are lucky to have two big, lush, green mango trees in our back garden, which not only produce lovely and juicy mangoes but also double as a sanctuary to many birds, lizards and insects in our urban garden.
We went upstairs to see what plants are in view from the kids rooms and spotted orchids and ferns growing off the trees as well as lovely pink Frangipani and other palms, flowers and shrubs growing ever so wild in our back garden.
They boys then went outside and collected leaves, climbers, small branches and flowers for the collage.
The Collage
It was a bit of a spontaneous activity and we were out of large art card but I found an old piece of brown paper in the back of a cupboard, which did the job just fine.
They stuck down their garden treasures with tape and glue and then added bits and pieces from their ‘construction box’ (a box of recycling and odd bits and pieces for junk models) to make up mangoes, flowers and bushes around the trees.
We are lucky to regularly spot resident and visiting animaIs in our garden, such as squirrels, garden fence lizards, butterflies, the occasional snake (yikes, can’t say they are my favourites!), spider catchers, scarlet sunbird, orange bellied flower pecker, common sunbird, chestnut munias and many other insects, birds, spiders and lizards. I asked the boys to draw pictures of the animals they regularly observe in the garden and they then cut out and glued the animals onto the collage.
It was a fun activity to do with them. They particularly had fun drawing all the animals and sticking them in between leaves and shrubs making up dialogue of what they are all talking about and getting up to in our garden when we are not looking. Turns out we have a hornbill and a baby tortoise named Dave living in our garden – got to learn something new every day!
More Earth Day Activities
I think the next on our list of Earth Day activities, (post coming soon) will be writing our “Pledges for the Planet” this coming week and I would as always love to hear of any other ideas that can help us to keep learning and loving the Natural world, currently from a distance, so please, please, please share here or on the Wild Kids Ink facebook and Instagram pages.
Have a safe and healthy week ahead. I hope you and your little ones will find ways to celebrate our magnificent planet this coming Earth Day.
