Environment Activities for Kindergarten

Teach kids to care about the environment without using guilt or dread.

By Wren Everett
Updated on March 8, 2024
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by Adobestock/master1305

Learn how to raise an environmentally conscious child to care about the environment without guilt or dread using these environment activities for kindergarten children.

Before I became a full-time “peasant,” I was an environmental educator, tasked with instilling nature stewardship in young minds. My boss gave me benchmarks for my nature hikes and stream surveys: “Educate students about river pollution,” “Inform students of regional endangered species,” or “Equip students to understand recycling.” While I did my utmost to engage with my young tag-alongs and give them an outdoor adventure, I noticed a disturbing trend. When the kids talked about their own relationships with nature, they were full of guilt and fear.

Through the unrelenting stream of information now available in the modern age, the kids’ young minds were too swiftly saddled with the knowledge of deforestation, escalated weather reports, forest fires, extinct species, polluted waterways, and grave-faced celebrities telling them to “do better.” Well-meaning but heavy-handed programs laid these big, scary problems at their feet, and then offered little recourse for tiny hands. After participating in classes like this for years, I can confidently report that the result of such teaching was often little more than helplessness, a sprinkle of self-loathing, and continued disconnect from nature.

I’d like to advocate for a different approach. Rather than scaring kids, we need to use fun, adventure, discovery, and locally connected efforts to truly educate children about their world. Here are some proposed fixes to missteps I’ve observed in environmental education.

How to Raise an Environmentally Conscious Child: Course Corrections

Error No. 1: Introducing problems kids can’t directly sense. Melting polar ice caps, carbon dioxide emissions, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are scary-sounding problems, but for young minds, they’re too physically distant to feel real. As I observed with a first grader who said her biggest fear was global warming, these intangible issues become mythological entities, occupying the same psychological space as storybook monsters or nightmares.

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