Ideas for a Fishful Thinking Earth Day

Looking for a fun Earth Day activity to do with your kids?

Here are a few ideas from Fishful Thinking that would be great ways to celebrate:

* Take a Nature Sense Walk - Pick a park or street in your neighborhood and go on a 15-minute nature sense walk. Choose one of the senses and set the goal of noticing as much as you can with that one sense.

We walked and walked at the botanical gardens this past weekend. The kids couldn't get enough of smelling those tulips.

* Take a Beauty Detour or two - At least once a week, take a 5-minute "beauty detour" with your child. The goal is to use the 5 minutes to notice something beautiful or inspiring or amazing or funny that you would not normally have noticed. For example, if you drive your child to school, leave 5 minutes earlier and drive down a street you don't normally take. Stop on the side of the road and notice something beautiful about the trees or the houses or the sky.

Beauty Detours have become almost habit for us. My kids still talk about the time we pulled over on the side of the road to get a closer look at some cows.

* Go on a Happiness Scavenger Hunt - Create a list of simple items or experiences that make you and your child laugh, smile, or that bring a sense of pleasure (petting a puppy, watching ants march in a line, swinging, etc.). Devote 30 to 60 minutes to a happiness scavenger hunt where you try to find/do several things on the list.

I'm planning to do the scavenger hunt with the kids when Abby gets home from school. We'll write "The Earth Makes Me Happy" on the top of our sheet and then list or draw pictures of things that we like to see & do when we go outside. Then we'll take a walk through the neighborhood and see how many we can check off our list. We'll bring a small garbage bag too so that if we see any litter along the way, we can pick it up. (That's an experience we'll be able to add to our "It Felt Meaningful When...list too.)

Also in honor of Earth Day, I'm hoping we can get a small garden going this weekend. We had so much fun with that a couple summers ago -
Digging, planting, and watering = lots of Mastery Moments!

*Pics from our scavenger hunt to follow on my Photo Story Friday post.

Done any Fishful Thinking or Earth Day activities this week?
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