Earthday Can Be So Sweet!

Our Favorite Earthday Food Art and Recipes To make Your Earthday Celebration A Little Sweeter

Earthday is a great day for  family and friends to celebrate their love of Earth.  We hope you are enjoying the day outdoors with nature, too.  So, while you are having your earth Day picnic, outing or celebration, why not add a few sweet memories to the menu.

Here is our favorite collection of food art and  creative cooking ideas  for both healthy and indulgent creations to wow all your guests. Get the kids involved and teach them that caring for Earth can be fun, too.

 Edible Food Art Earthday Crafts:

Make Earthday Cookies Yummy for your tummy.

Make an Earthday Cake Treat you can't beat

Earthday Cupcakes Small so you don't eat all.

Yummy Gummy Worm & Dirt PuddingGreat for Earthday or a science lesson. Made with pudding, crumpled oreos and gummy worms...not gross as it sounds!

Earth Rice Krispie Balls
Kids will have a ball making these and they are Perfect For Earth Day!

Earthday Marzipan Simply a Healthy Alternative

Earthday Sphere Cake 


Heart Shaped Earth Cake

Earthday World Cookies

Earthday Earth Sphere Pops

Earthday Wormy Cupcakes

Heart Shaped Earthday Pops

Earthday Frosting Free Cupcake

Earthday Moon Pie Cookies

Earthday Rice Krispie Cookies

 More edible food crafts for holidays and everyday 

New Green Earthday JOURNAL Ideas,Tips Activity Page!

Rah Rah Recyclemania Cleans Up At A College Near You

The Results Are In - The Creativity Is Right On 

A look at the History and Creative Thinking that goes into RECYCLEMANIA.  Plus the best of the posters past and present!

The 14th College Campus Recycling Competition 

Recyclemania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. The program is a project of the College and University Recycling Council (CURC), managed by Keep America Beautiful in conjunction with EPA WasteWise.

The competition runs from January through March. Over the 10-week period, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked in each of four different categories. With each week's reports and rankings, participating schools watch how their results fluctuate against other schools and use this to rally their campuses to reduce and recycle more.

According to Recyclemania millions of students & staff in nearly 1,000 Colleges & Universities participated recovering 91 million pounds of material that would have gine to a landfill or landed on streets an in rivers.

The 2014  Recyclemania Event reported the following results:

RecycleMania 2014 results are in. The Wisconsin Grand Champion contest is for the highest cumulative recycling rate. Congratulations to this year’s top five finishers!
• UW-Stout (52.79%)
• UW-Platteville (46.18)
• UW-Oshkosh (46.12%)
• UW-River Falls (34.23%) 
• UW-Milwaukee (33.39%)

At Planetpals, we encourage all colleges to join in! Perhaps it's time for all schools everywhere to follow suit and start a program of their own!

I'd say "May the best school win", but, I think all the schools are winners for participating.

Learn more about recycling!  

Follow #ecoed on twitter

Follow @planetpals on Twitter

Follow /planetpals on Facebook 

Along with this great event, came a slew of creative and colorful posters nationwide present and past:

 

 

 

  

Free For All At All National Parks This Weekend

NATIONAL PARK WEEK

April 19-20, 2014    Free Admission All Week!

PICTURE YOURSELF IN A NATIONAL PARK this April 20 - 20 as America celebrates National Park Week –– a chance to hike, learn, share, and give back in the nation’s 397 national parks. Each year, we take this time to celebrate what we all have inherited as Americans – 84 million acres of the world’s most spectacular scenery, historic landmarks and cultural treasures.

Whether it is your first trip, or the latest of many memorable park experiences, National Park Week is a chance for all Americans to get active while experiencing the amazing places that make up the national park system for FREE. Visit any of America’s national parks and enjoy free admission all week long!

It''s green enough to have free parks for the week, but how can you make it greener?

Check out Planetpals Green Nature Journal.  Loaded with eco friendly ideas, activities, games, more for camping, picnicking, playing at the park. 

Get Planetpals Park Puzzle Teach Kids to love nature with the Pals while you are there!

Have a Green Earthday! 

© jag planetpals.com 

How Green Does Your School Garden Grow?

Ideas For A  Greener School or Community Garden

Escola José Leite de Souza in Monteiro, Brazil School Garden

It's  Spring and a great time to initiate the school garden.  Perhaps it will be a community garden where the food or flowers grown will be given to seniors or sold to raise money for the school.

Whatever the mission of your school garden, teaching kids to grow is a lesson they will carry with them throughout their lives.  Why not add to that lesson and make it greener!  That means using natural materials as well as recycled materials. At the same time, encourage students to be resourceful, by challenging them to think of ways they can repurpose items to use in the garden.

Use one or all of these ideas to promote greener thinking in the school garden.

• Start with a compost pile to provide healthy soil 
• Start seedlings in recycled containers, such as yogurt cups with covers 
• Collect rain water and other water sources in containers or rain barrels
• Use large soda or milk bottles for irrigation
• Use soda bottles or other containers to make upside down planters
• Make home made natural fertilizers
• Encourage learning about growing techniques such as organic gardening or  hydrophonics
• Encourage local suppliers of green garden supplies to get involved and sponsor supplies for the garden
• Get senior citizens involved, many often know about gardening from experience. Young and old working together will be a lesson in itself!
• Decorate the garden with recycled crafts such as bottle cap wind chimes (these projects are great for younger school children, too!)

Other Simple Growing Tips:.

• Use packing peanuts for drainage (instead of stones)
• Cover the roots with toilet paper rolls (cut in half) When you plant seedlings in the garden-to keep insects away
• Cover the roots with paper cups (cut out the bottom) When you plant seedlings in the garden- to keep insects away
• Keep a tuna can in the garden to measure weekly watering--it should be 1 inch
• Try packing peanuts instead of soil as Hydro phonics
• You can mix peat moss with other materials to create your own growing medium
• To start seeds using perlite, use a mixture of 1 part perlite and 1 part moistened peat moss
• Cover post with plastic bags, wrap or clear container it helps to retain moisture, and keep the soil from drying out

Learn about composting with Squirmy Wormy:

School Garden Projects:

•  The Verde Garden: 
• Growing A Healthy Community
• Common Vision.org
• Garden of Wonders
• Brookside School Farm
• The Edible Schoolyard 

Other Handy School Garden Links and Downloads:

• Planetpals Organic, Natural, Recycle Gardening Ideas, Tips, Crafts

• How to Start a Garden in a Local School
• Starting A School Garden Checklist Download
• The Kitchen garden foundation has a great school gardening program
• From Planet Green- Starting An Edible School Garden
• The School Garden Tool Kit
• Starting A Community Garden At Your School
• Download this How to Start  School Garden Info Sheet
• Designing Our School Garden

 

 © jag planetpals.com All rights reserved

Free Downloadable Recycle Symbol Coloring Page

Great Earthday activity for the classroom or homeschool.

Download this 8 1/2 x 11 Recycle Sign Coloring Page .  Have kids color it, write a poem in it, or do a collage on it.  You could even have them cut pictures of recycle materials such as bottles, cans , newspaper from magazines and learn what recycling is all about.

Teach them the History of the Mobius Loop Recycle Symbol, too.