Earth Day occurs every year on April 22. There are many engaging and educational ways to incorporate this theme into your math instruction no matter what grade you teach. All listed activities are FREE.
Earth Day Math Activities for Elementary School
Explore the symmetry in nature with ideas from this post Teaching Symmetry
Learn about math in nature with the Fibonacci Sequence.
Ideas from Math Start for using their book Earth Day Hooray! to understand place value (activities can be differentiated from kindergarten-5th grade)
Use your measuring and fraction skills to make Earth Day Slime with this recipe from Little Bins for Little Hands. Recipes are great for teaching input/output tables too.
Slime too messy? Here’s a recipe for Earth Day play dough instead.
For a geography connection, use these free play dough mats to form continents out of your play dough!
MANY STEM ideas for Earth Day from Little Bins for Little Hands including Recycled STEM, Conservation STEM and Earth Science STEM
Free Earth Day Color a Fraction Pack from Math Geek Mama. This resource includes 2 visual fractions coloring pages, discussion questions, comparing fractions practice, and a printable game.
Earth Day Equivalent Fractions free printable (spin and cover and flip books)
Free Master Math Fact Grid Sheets for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with an Earth Day theme.
Earth Day Math Games Freebie- two printable games from Games 4 Learning for 2-4 players in grades 1-4. Plant a Tree is an addition/ subtraction game where students compete to be the first to plant the seedling. Save a Tree Doubles and Triples has students double or triple numbers as they compete to be first to surround a tree.
Celebrate Earth Day with Math! from Marilyn Burns at Math Solutions suggests reading The Librarian Who Measured the Earth to explore circumference with grades 2-5, and then checking out Farmers’ Math to learn the math behind growing plants in the classroom. For a language connection, ReadWorks has a 3rd grade read aloud lesson to go with the book, and a non fiction article for paired text.
Activities for Middle School
Cost of Light Bulbs- In this activity for 5th grade- high school from Yummy Math, students learn about LED and CFL light bulbs as they analyze and graph their energy use and costs of lights and appliances. Students use decimals operations, order of operations, graphing, systems and piecewise functions in this activity to help them think about ways to conserve the energy that they use
Earth Day Math Activities for Middle School Students from Sadlier Math Blog offers downloadable and printable activities for using ratios, unit rates, and data distributions to compare different countries’ carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (free but requires email address)
Activities for Preschool/Kindergarten
Planting a Pattern- using dried beans to make patterns in a construction paper “garden”
Beans and Flower Pots Counting Activity- In this hands on activity from The Imagination Tree, kids count dried beans into numbered pots.
Apple Tree Number Matching Game
Of course the Earth Day play dough in the elementary section would be fun for preschool and kindergarten as well! Play Subtraction Smash or use the Beautiful Bug Playdough Mats for a science connection.
Free printable math games from The Kindergarten Connection have 3 levels of play for preschool-1st grade level. Games included are Roll and Cover, Spin and Add, Spin and Subtract.
Color By Number and Roll, Add, and Color free printables from Mrs. Thompson’s Treasures.