Earth Day Collage

The truth is, most toddlers don't really understand or care about Earth Day. They do, however, enjoy learning about the world around them. Baby Bear is very interested in colors right now. He points to an object and either says what color he thinks it is or waits for me to say the color. So, for Earth Day, we've been talking more about colors we see in nature. His favorites are green grass and blue sky. It just so happened that I had leftover blue and green paint samples from painting his nursery, so we upcycled those into a collage. I cut the samples into small rectangles, and Baby Bear spread glue over a piece of construction paper. Then, we stuck the pieces to the paper. OK, so I added most of them to the paper, and Baby Bear made sure they were really stuck by painting them over with the glue left on his brush. As a finishing touch, Baby Bear sprinkled glitter over the collage. We had no particular reason for the glitter, just that Baby Bear likes shaking the glitter out. This activity could be adapted for older children by having them glue the paint chip pieces onto a picture of the earth, placing green on the land and blue on the ocean.