Climate Action Calendar

Challenge your community members to take climate action by designing a 22-day calendar!
Ages 5-14 / 45
min Activity
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Objectives

  • Create a calendar that inspires people to take action to help protect and restore the environment 
  • Share their class’s calendar to a collaborative Book Creator bookshelf, and explore climate actions submitted by students around the world (located in the “Gallery” tab) 
  • Optionally, connect with another classroom over a live virtual exchange to share climate actions and stories with each other

Supporting Research

In order to mitigate students’ anxiety around climate change and foster a willingness to take action, researchers have identified the importance of educational programming in which students are empowered to lead personal actions and educate others about climate change. During this activity, educators should encourage students to practice perspective taking and collaboration to identify and exchange ideas for climate actions that they can take together.

To learn more about these skills, and how they promote students’ healthy growth and the development of empathy, please check out our Empathy Framework.

Materials

Activity Partners

Instructions

  1. Introduce the activity by explaining: “Every year, on April 22nd, people from around the world come together to celebrate Earth Day! The goal of Earth Day is to reflect on how our actions impact the world around us, and how we can help protect and restore the environment. This year, our class is going to work on a calendar that features an action to complete each day in April leading up to Earth Day. Then, we’ll share the calendar with our community members and other students around the world to inspire them to join too!”

    Ask students to think of actions that help care for the planet, such as: 
    • Picking up trash 
    • Watering plants 
    • Eating less meat
    • Saying “no” to single-use plastic (e.g., water bottles and plastic utensils)
    • Using reusable grocery bags 

    Make a list of students’ responses on a physical or digital board that is visible to everyone. 
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  2. Together, decide on 22 actions to include on your calendar! Try to choose ones that are easy and simple for people to complete without requiring too many materials. Use strategies such as dot-voting to ensure that all students have the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process.
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  3. Once students have decided on the actions they want to include in their calendar, work together to design it! 

    For example, you can draw a calendar on a large piece of chart paper and ask each student to decorate a different square, or use a digital tool like Canva. Students should write down the action for each day, and add small symbols and pictures to help illustrate it! 
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  4. After finishing your calendar, post it on a classroom wall so that students can follow along and track their progress. 

    Consider making copies and distributing them to other members of your school and local community so they can join too! 
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  5. At the end of the 22-day challenge, invite students to share any reflections by asking the following questions: 
    • How did it feel to participate in this project, and know that your individual actions are helping to protect the planet? 
    • What climate action did you enjoy the most? Are there any actions that you can turn into a regular habit? 
    • Were there any climate actions that were challenging for you to complete? Why? 
    • How did participating in this project help you gain awareness about environmental issues and actions that can help address them? 
    • How can you continue encouraging other people (like your family, friends, and neighbors) to adopt more environmentally friendly habits? 

If students in both classes have individual devices (e.g., mobile phone, tablet, laptop, etc.)...

Use a platform such as Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams which allows you to screen-share during a video call. 
One educator should set up the Kahoot! game and share the code with students in both classes by following this tutorial about using Kahoot! in a remote learning environment, and share their screen so everyone can follow along.

If students in either class don’t have individual devices...

Follow the same instructions above, with one educator starting the game and sharing their screen so both classes can follow along.  
Instead of students joining the game to answer the questions, they can hold up their fingers, call out their answer, or use a paper template to indicate their response.

If you prefer not using Kahoot!...

Use this document (Spanish version) to prompt students.