Online Educational Activities for Kids & Families

Earth Day is April 22

Commemorate Earth Day’s 50th anniversary with STEM and environmental education wherever you are! Earth Day Network is committed to supporting parents and teachers in providing engaging environmental education opportunities. As students and parents all over the world face a new reality of learning from home and teachers work hard to transition to digital classes, Earth Day Network is here to help! They have compiled lessons, activities and ideas for students of all ages to engage with Earth Day and the environmental movement through science, art and civic action!

City Nature Challenge

City Nature Challenge is an international four-day bioblitz that encourages folks to get outside, take as many pictures of plants and animals they find in the wild, and upload them to their iNaturalist app. This event is ordinarily a friendly challenge between cities, but this year the organizers want to embrace the healing power of nature and encourage the collaborative aspect of the City Nature Challenge. The Challenge takes place in 2 parts: April 24-27, Taking pictures of wild plants and animals. April 28-May 3, identifying what was found. Learn more.

Local Online Resources

Pacific Science Center – lots of videos and activities to do at home (spiders, etc.) Facebook Live every morning at 11:00 am.

Woodland Park Zoo – Activities for families.

Kid’s Quest Museum – Activities with stories, science projects, art projects on YouTube Channel

Plant Resources

Home garden activities

Longwood Gardens: Learn about Carnivorous Plants through a Virtual Field Trip at Longwood Gardens (3rd-8th grade)

Missouri Botanical Garden: Biology of Plants, Grades 1–3. Based on the MBG video series of the same name, this site introduces plants to young children. Concepts such as photosynthesis, pollination, seed dispersal and adaptation are explained. Classroom lesson plans are available for download with activities.

US Botanical Garden: Has a coloring book you can download – fun for adults too!

April is Citizen Science Month!

While we are all home walking around our neighborhoods, how about getting involved in helping with a citizen science project? Great for adults or families! Here are some links to get you started:

Budburst (Chicago Botanic Garden): Monitor plants as the seasons change.

Celebrate Urban Birds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology): 4 easy steps: 1) learn to identify birds (16 main US birds; 4 bird species for Washington state) 2) choose an area 3) watch birds for 10 minutes a day for 3 days 4) report your results online

SciStarter: Starting place to find projects. Try searching on “bees”, “frogs”, “balloon breakdown”, “plants” or any topic that interests you. Note: Chrome browser works best.

Plantsnap: This is a plant i.d. app for your iOS or Android device. This is a fun tool to play around with and by using the app you can help to make it better. There is also an opportunity to share thoughts and photos with others.

Journey North: Record migration-related butterfly and other animal sightings.

Zooniverse: Quite a few of these projects involve analyzing pictures of animals in the wild and celestial bodies.