Earth Day Explorers {a year of creative playdates} | Tuesdays with Jacob

Earth Day Explorers {a year of creative playdates}

April 15, 2016

This post contains affiliate links to some of our craft supplies, but I only promote products I love! 

Hold onto your hats friends, this is my favorite playdate yet! There's no better way to celebrate our Earth than by getting out and exploring it, so we packed our bags and took this playdate to our local State park. The weather was perfect and everyone had a great time! 


If you've read my other playdate posts, you know my play dates generally follow a simple formula:

1. Craft Time
2. Lunch
3. Snack
4. Activity Time

To start our play date we got right to work on our craft, since we were going to need drying time between steps.


We gave each kid a clay pot (find them in a 5 pack HERE ) and set the table with little bowls of paint. The kids used circle sponges to decorate their pots and then we set them aside to dry.


 My intention was to make polka dotted flower pots, but they smeared their sponges around and I think they turned out adorable as is. 


We needed just a little bit of filler time to let the pots dry, so we snuck in a quick, easy second craft - birdfeeders!


These are so simple to do!

Pine Cone Bird Feeders
1. fill a cup or plate with birdseed 
2. then use a knife to cover a pinecone in peanut butter
3. roll your pinecone in the birdseed
4. tie a string around it and hang it from a tree outside


Some of us (MY KID) were more interested in eating the peanut butter, but they all got put together!


If you don't live in an area with pinecones (I don't) you can find them HERE like I did. The birdseed came from HERE .

At this point it was becoming obvious that stomachs were starting to grumble, so we got out lunch.


I kept it simple with a picnic spread. Each plate had a sandwich, cucumber, watermelon, and cheese. Their glasses were filled with blue V8. You can find the flower cookie cutters HERE .


Once everyone's bellies were happy we finished up our flower pots by adding some soil, planting sun flowers, and then watering them.



Now the pots are all ready to cheer up a sunny window at home!



With our crafts all done, it was time for snack! I put together dirt pudding ahead of time and wrapped each cup in syran wrap for easy transport.


These are simple to make!

Dirt Pudding
1 box chocolate pudding mix
Crushed oreos 
gummy worms

1. Mix up pudding accoring to package directions and chill
2. Crush your oreos up 
3. Fill a cup with pudding, then top with oreos and a gummy worm



If you know kids, you could probably guess that by this point everyone was ready to get up and get moving! 


Here's where having a playdate at a state park (or any nature park!) comes in handy... I didn't have to put together any thing specific for our activity - a nature walk!


I did print out a nature walk checklist - you can find it for free in this Earth Day pack HERE. (you do have to sign up for an account but it's free!) And then we took off exploring. 



Our State park has a huge boardwalk that goes out over the lagoon and leads towards the beach, so that's where we headed, exploring the wildlife as we went!



We made it out to the beach, but the man-o-war had planned an invasion that day so we skipped a swim and headed back to the nature center. 



The kids were pretty interested in the Loggerhead turtle and the sea rocks in the nature center, but let's be honest. They were most entertained by the pamphlets. Which they threw everywhere and the moms had to pick up. Just keeping it real. 



Love these kids and how much fun they have together!


Do you have fun plans for Earth Day? I'd love to hear about them, leave me a comment below! 

Here's a handy pin so you can save these ideas! 


1 comment on "Earth Day Explorers {a year of creative playdates}"
  1. Love this. The dirt cake... I loved that when I was a kid. I totally forgot about it!

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