11 Simple Garden Projects You Can Do With Kids for Earth Day

If you’ve been looking for a good reason to get your kids out in the garden, Earth Day is coming up. It’s a great time to give them hands-on lessons and teach them about environmental issues and the importance of sustainability. What better way is there to teach young people about biodiversity and creating a thriving ecosystem than to work on creating one in your own yard? 

Kids are naturally curious, so getting them involved in caring for the Earth at an early age is more likely to make an impression. The ideas we form as children tend to stick with us and help us to shape our habits and beliefs. Getting them to join you in one of your hobbies also creates a bond and, hopefully, a lifelong love for gardening that you can share. If you don’t have children of your own, borrow a niece, nephew, or friend’s little one to share with.

Plant a Tree

It may sound simple or cliché, but planting a tree has always been a symbolic practice on Earth Day. I can remember vividly doing this at school with my 5th-grade class. That was 33 years ago, but it made the holiday a memorable one. It also developed into a rather costly habit, but no one will ever say that I’m not doing my part to preserve the environment. 

There are so many wonderful directions you can take with this seemingly simple activity. Talk about what trees they like best. Do they love the autumn colors? Maples, serviceberries, and aspens have gorgeous, showy fall foliage. Do they love trees that bloom in spring? A Japanese magnolia or an ornamental cherry is an incredible choice for spring flowers. 

If your kids are big fruit eaters, an Earth Day fruit tree planting project makes a lovely addition to the landscape. Peaches are easy to grow as long as you cover the fruit while it’s maturing. Citrus trees are almost carefree, save for a couple of yearly applications of fertilizer. Talk about pollination and which trees are self-fertile and which need a pollinator partner.

Whether you plant a shade tree, a fruit tree, a flowering tree, or one with stunning fall colors, it will be a hit. Not only is the experience interesting, but it’s also a permanent fixture in your yard that will always be a reminder of the occasion. 

Garden Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt is a wonderful way for young children to learn about ecosystems and life stages. It also allows you to sit back with a cup of coffee and observe them hunting for garden treasures. Sometimes, giving ourselves the time to simply observe our kids concentrating and using their problem-solving skills makes the best memories. 

For those of reading age, a list of items with descriptions will send them on a mission to identify different leaf patterns and flower forms. See if they can use your instructions to identify specific plants or weeds. Younger children might need pictures or illustrations to match various items in the yard. 

If you don’t mind them picking flowers and whatnot, you can have them collect items. Otherwise, give them a camera and have them take photos of the items as they find them. You never know—you could have a budding nature photographer on your hands!

Make a Bird Feeder

Do you have a little one who gets excited about animals? Bring birds to the yard for them to learn about and observe. This kid-friendly Earth Day project is super cheap and simple. Work with them to create a homemade bird feeder, house, or birdbath. We keep them in our kitchen and bathroom windows, and everyone loves how close the birds come once they learn to trust us. 

One tried and true bird feeder that’s easy to make from common items in the home and garden is a peanut butter pine cone rolled in birdseed. Have them find a nice fat cone and attach a string to the top. Then, slather it with peanut butter and roll it in birdseed. You get bonus points if you can harvest seeds from your own garden. This is a great excuse to hold onto spent sunflowers at the end of summer. 

A birdbath can come from a number of repurposed items. An upside-down flower pot with a shallow bowl attached to the top works well. Or, use the water dish that the pot sits in and swap them from top to bottom. 

It’s easy to find small wooden birdhouses at local craft stores for kids to paint and personalize. Set one close to the home and under cover, and maybe a house wren will take up residence. 

Build an Insect Hotel

Bugs need homes, too, and many of them are quite beneficial. In fact, a balanced ecosystem will have an abundance of insects present. You can make these mostly from items around the yard or take a nature walk to find bits and pieces for the project. 

Start off with a wooden box and fill it with lots of different materials for different insects to nest in. If you have bamboo, a reed cut into short lengths clustered together will make good spots for bugs to crawl into. Add pinecones, moss, lichen, seed pods, and pine needles. These all make good nesting materials.

Hang your insect hotel from a tree, away from the house, of course. Kids can check in a few weeks to see if they have any residents. Just be careful about bites and stings. 

Make a Pollinator Watering Station

Bees are important to gardens, and water is important to bees. It takes a lot of energy for them to do all that pollinating. If there is a water source nearby, they are more likely to come back to the spot, which means more flowers and vegetables for you! This goes for butterflies, too!

Bees locate water by smell rather than by sight. What this means for us is that we should avoid using fresh, clean water often. Rather, you should leave the same water for a while. Allow leaves to fall into it and other organic materials to grow. They will seek out water that contains sodium for most of the year, to replace electrolytes, you can add a bit of sea salt into the water to help them find it. 

It’s not difficult to create your own DIY bee watering station. If you have a birdbath, place some pebbles in the bottom that will sit slightly above the water level. This gives pollinators a place to rest where they can drink without falling in. I’m a beekeeper, so this is an important part of my yard. I keep several concrete bird baths around and see bees coming and going from them often on sunny days. 

One of the easiest ways to give some water to the bees is to leave a spigot on just enough to have a slow drip. They will find it on a hot day, and you’ll see a cluster of bees drinking there. Some other common items that make good bee watering stations are a self-watering pet bowl or a hummingbird feeder with the flower attachments pulled off. 

Start Composting

If you don’t already, Earth Day is a great time to start a composting project and teach kids about repurposing food scraps. I know that when we aren’t paying attention, a lot of leftover food goes right in the trash can. If you use plastic bags, that food just sits in a landfill for years, doing nothing but taking up space. 

Repurposing that food waste into rich, nutrient-dense compost is great for the environment and the garden! Often, cities and municipalities will give out compost bins for free, especially around Earth Day. If not, you can typically pick one up at a nursery or garden center.

Designate a spot for putting food waste where you’ll remember to take it out daily. This makes a great daily chore to carry these good habits over into their everyday life. 

Identify Butterfly Host Plants

Share with kids about butterflies and host plants. Every species of butterfly and moth has one or more specific plants on which they lay their eggs. These plants are the first food for their larvae and the perfect food for that particular insect.

Butterfly host plants are nearly always native plants, although you may encounter those that accept non-native substitutes from the same genus. Find out what specific butterflies live in your area by observing and looking up names along with photos.

Familiarize yourselves with each butterfly’s host and walk around the garden or neighborhood looking for them. If you often see a specific species in your yard, chances are there is a host nearby. 

Plant a Native Pollinator Plant

Now that you know about host plants, decide on one you can plant in your garden. It will be exciting for kids to see if that butterfly comes to visit. Then, once the caterpillars show up, things get exciting.

You can also research native pollen and nectar plants for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, among others. Add one or more of these to your flower beds, and you’ll draw more pollinators. 

Many pollinators are on endangered lists or experiencing rapid population decline. Talk about why these insects and animals are so important to our environment and food supply. Milkweed, of all kinds, is the sole larval food for Monarch butterflies, which are declining quickly. Find out what species grow in your area and pick one up at the local nursery.

Identify Common Insects

Do you have a bug-loving kiddo? Some kids take an interest in insects, while others may be afraid or disinterested. If you have a future entomologist in your family, searching for and identifying common bugs in the garden is another great way to talk about a balanced ecosystem. 

See if you can find some nuisance insects. Aphids are almost always somewhere among my plants. And talk about how they suck the sap from plants, depleting them of nutrients and leaving behind a sticky mess. Then, see if you can find a predatory counterpart, like a ladybug, wasp, or lacewing. 

This is a great way to talk about the food chain. The nuisance insect eats the plant, and the helpful insect eats the nuisance ones. Then, if you’re able, see if you can find a frog or lizard and weave them into the cycle. If frogs are present in your garden, this is a good indication that there aren’t any bad chemicals present and a healthy ecosystem is in place. 

Look for Caterpillars and Chrysalis 

If you locate some host plants, caterpillar-searching is another fun Earth Day project to keep kids engaged in the garden. This is usually easy this time of year. Check the leaves of host plants, and make sure to look underneath where they could be hiding out. 

If you can’t find any cats, see if you can find signs that they were recently present. If your host plant is missing a significant amount of foliage or has chewed-up leaves, there is a good chance the caterpillars were present in the not-so-distant past. 

If you see no caterpillars but evidence that they were there recently, the next step is a lot of fun. Search the area for a chrysalis or two. Look underneath things where there is space for a caterpillar to spin its magic. Monarchs have bright green cocoons with metallic spots around the top; they are quite beautiful. 

This can lead to a great conversation or lesson on lifecycles. You can walk them through the process of adults laying their eggs on host plants and identify the places where you have evidence of recently feeding larvae. Talk about metamorphosis and what is going on inside that chrysalis that will result in a beautiful butterfly in a short time. 

Make Seed Bombs

Seed bombs are a fun activity for kids to do, and one that will produce interesting gifts to give friends and family members that also love to garden. Seed bombs are small balls of seeds stuck together that you can work into the soil anyplace that needs some brightening up.

See if you can get hold of some native seeds for this project, as these will create the most environmentally friendly flower patch. You’ll need some seeds, peat-free compost, water, powdered clay, and a bowl for mixing. 

Mix together a cup of seeds and five cups of compost, then add two cups of clay. If your soil is clay-heavy, you can use it in place of the clay powder. Gradually add water, mixing the ingredients together until the mixture is firm but sticks together easily. 

Let your bombs dry in the sun for a day, and then you can share them or use them in your own garden. Kids will enjoy throwing their ‘bombs’ at the ground and seeing bits scatter. Rough up the soil beforehand to get a better germination rate. If you’re sharing your seed bombs, have kids write down a list of what seeds are in them so that friends will know what to expect.