G is for Green: Themed Activities

 ðŸ“—  Ten Green Ideas come to mind...

1.  Green Light means GO!  -book, Go, Dog, Go, game: red light/green light. craft: traffic light tissue paper craft

2.  Green Zone vs. Red Zone: Are you good to go? Are you in a good mood or are you starting to get anxious or angry?   How does this connect with the Zones of Regulation? Use zones to promote self awareness and regulation.  It also helps to discuss how to handle situations that put someone in a red zone (upset) and to discuss calming techniques that will bring them back into the green zone.

3.  Green Earth Initiatives:  Book: When is it great to turn Green?  is an Environment Q&A book by M Drohan and C Levchuck that you may want to read.  Work on dividing items into the correct recycling bin.  Practice reduce, reuse and recycle projects.  Create crafts with recycled materials.  'Adopt' an animal (for home or through a local zoo)or plant a tree project. Develop a journal for tree/plant/flower identification.  Perform soil acidity experiments. Try water testing and natural water filtration ideas.  Go camping in the woods, your yard or your room and have fun planning all the green camping ideas.

4.  Green Vegetables: Set up a toy shopping trip and make up some play meals together.  Categorize fruits and vegetables or divide by colour. Plant seeds.  Try a new vegetable. 

5. Green Money:  Well, all colours for Canadians but money as a theme nonetheless: money identification, counting activities, sorting, product values, shopping skills,  math skills, writing assignments such as "What would you do if you won $500?", jobs to earn money and more.

6. Green Frogs and Lizards.  Learn about the species, Perform the Frog on the Log poem. Sing the Five green and speckled frogs song. Try frog hopping on lily pads (jumping games or math activities) Read the books: Frog and Toad are Friends and Magic School Bus Gets Cold Feet where Liz goes to a Herp Haven. 

7. Green Grass:  I think of Parks, Picnics. Gardens, growing grass seed hair in a potato head and using a fork dipped in green paint and pulled onto paper to make green grass.  I wonder if the grass is always greener on the other side? Touching or walking on grass would be a great sensory activity too.

8.  Green Aliens- Have a monster party or an outer space theme.  Design crazy green aliens. Learn about space.  Use story starters such as "One day a green alien appeared in my room...." or "My family adopted an alien!" 

9. Green Slime: Sensory goodness!  Add sparkles or googly eyes or add it to a bin of toys.  Make ooblick or playdough or green rice instead.

10. Green Gardens: What can you find in a garden?  Have a list of things to search for such as worms, dandelions, rocks, snails, dirt, potato bugs, spiders, flowers.  Count how many of each item you located. You can use tally marks to show the number, pictographs or numerals to practice different ways to show things.  You can read a book such as How does your garden grow? or research how to grow different items and then try some.  It can be a balcony or pot garden too.  You can create a fairy garden with moss and dirt and rocks and tiny fairy ornaments in a small pot.  You can create a bug haven in your garden-maybe even focusing on developing a butterfly friendly garden.  The possibilities go on and on.

I am sure you can add to this list of GREEN activities.  You can add your favourites to the comment section if you would like to share them.  The greatest thing is to try some of them with the child in your life to have fun while building skills. There is so much to learn!  Let's enjoy the process


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