A round-up of kid friendly activities for Earth Day from our friends over at Pennies for the Planet.

Plant a Butterfly Garden

Creating habitat for butterflies is easier than you think. In addition to ensuring our fluttery friends have plenty to eat and a place to lay their eggs, habitat gardens add beauty to any landscape. Butterfly habitat can be created in schoolyards, in backyards, and even on balconies or rooftops.

Butterflies eat nectar, so flowering plants are important. The following flowering plants provide plenty of food for butterflies: Aster, Black-eyed Susan, Butterfly bush, Coneflower, Coreopsis, Cosmos, Goldenrod, Lantana, Lavender, Marigolds, Petunias, Phlox, Sweet Alyssum, Verbena, Zinnias. Be sure to check the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s Native Plant Database to find out which plants are native to your area.

Another important plant for butterflies is milkweed, as many species, including monarch butterflies, lay their eggs on the plant. Spring is the perfect time to plant new gardens, so pick a plot with your kids or students and get planting this Earth Day.

Park Clean-Up

Ever walk past litter in a park and wonder where the scattered garbage goes? Chances are, it will end up in your local waterway or in the ocean where it can prove hazardous to wildlife. Work with your parks department or a local nature center and sign up your family or class for a volunteer clean up. (Can’t find any organized clean-ups happening around Earth Day? Organize your own! Check out this video to see how.) Once you have a date set and a group of volunteers ready, you can even reach out to businesses and see if they would like to sponsor with food or drinks.

Cleaning up a park with your family or students will not only keep green spaces beautiful, it will illustrate to your kids just how easy it is to get outside and give back.

Ride a Bike to School

While May 28th is officially Ride Your Bike to School Day, Earth Day presents another great opportunity to promote bike use—and safety. Make sure the route to school is bike friendly, and that all participants are wearing the proper gear, including helmets, and then plan a day to ride to school. You can also see if friends and family would pledge to support your ride. Pledges can very, depending on length (for example, $1 for every quarter mile biked). Then use the money collected to support Pennies for the Planet and the conservation projects it’s funding. Reduce carbon AND raise money to protect habit.

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Pennies for the Planet is a powerful tool for motivating kids of all ages to become engaged in protecting biodiversity. Kids not only learn more about conservation, but also directly help protect it by raising funds and conducting environmental projects in their own communities. To get your child/students involved, download a FREE starter kit!

Pennies is the education arm of TogetherGreen, a conservation initiative from Audubon, supported by a generous gift from Toyota.