Try this at home
Ask learners to write or talk about what Earth Day means to them. Then ask them to create their own symbol for the day. Provide art supplies—anything from paper and colored pencil to fabric scraps to (rinsed-off) stuff from the recycling bin.
For inspiration, here are a few Earth Day symbols that already exist.
John McConnell is an activist, born in 1915, who (along with U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson) is credited as the founder of Earth Day. Here he is in front of his home in Denver, Colorado, with the Earth Flag he designed (photo by Charles Michael Murray).
In 1969, Ron Cobb—a multi-talented artist who has done everything from inking animation cels on Disney’s "Sleeping Beauty" to production design on "Star Wars"—created an ecology symbol formed by taking the letters "e" and "o", taken from the words "environment" and "organism", and putting them in superposition, thereby forming a shape reminiscent of the Greek letter Θ (Theta).
In 1970 "Look" magazine incorporated the now-public-domain symbol into an image of a flag, patterned after the flag of the United States, with thirteen stripes alternating green and white.
The initial specs of Ron Cobb's ecology symbol:
