21 Free Online Games About The Environment For Kids
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One of the best way to teach kids anything is through play - if they are having fun they are inevitably going to pick up some of the information on that subject.
So if you want kids to understand concepts like climate change, environmental issues and recycling, a really good way to introduce the topics is by playing games about the environment, sustainability and recycling.
So here are 21 of the best free environmental online games and activities. A collection of environment-themed games for kids to play online.
All these environmental games are great fun to play and are educational - you might even be tempted to try some yourself after!
Most are aimed at younger kids but there are a couple of games about the environment which are realy trick and require some more mature logical thought (translation: I wasn't very good at them...)
- Octonauts Ocean Adventures
- Design Squad Fidgit Power Game
- Eco Empire
- Coral Bleaching
- Go With the Flow
- Recycle City
- AJ's Recycle Rescue
- Sesame Street Go Green
- WaterSense Game
- CBBC Environment Puzzles
- Heatwave Antarctica
- Litter Critters Learn to Sort and Recycle Game
- Tom and Jerry River Recycle Game
- Water the Village Game
- Recycle Roundup
- Amazin Amazon Adventure
- Habitats
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers
- Hurricane Simulation
- Grow Snow Crystals
- Coral with Fishes Jigsaw
Join Captain Barnacles and the rest of the Octonauts crew as they come to the aid of marine life affected by the changing oceans and seas.
This is an interactive story game based on the hugely popular CBeebies series where you have to solve different environmental problems to help the ocean's inhabitants.
Build the appropriate wind turbine in this village and learn about what things need electricity to power them.
A very entertaining game with some really silly stuff thrown in too!
A recycling simulation game with all your favourite Cartoon Network characters to play along with.
The more you recycle, the more money that you make, so you can buy better recycling machines.
This game from NASA Climate Kids shows how water temperature and water pollution levels affect the coral that lives in the sea.
You can increase and decrease the sea temperature and pollution levels and create a storm to show the temporary effect that this has on coral bleaching.
The NASA Climate Kids section also includes lots of animations, and well explained information about environmental issues, such as pollution, greenhouse gases and climate change.
Go With the Flow is an ocean currents game, where you use currents, salt and heat to affect the way currents work.
Also found on NASA Climate Kids, this one is defininitely a game for older children, as this requires quite a bit of thought and concentration. I found this one really hard!
Explore Recycle City to learn all about how homes, schools and businesses can recycle their waste and unwanted items.
There is lots to read in this game, so it's another one for older kids.
AJ's Recycle Rescue gives kids lots of ideas on how you can reuse trash items to make new things to make the local park even better.
Based on PBS Kids series Hero Elementary, where kids use their superpowers along with knowledge of maths and science to make the world a better place.
Join Sesame Street's Grover to discover ways to take care of our planet. An animated game with lots of friends from this ever-popular TV show.
This gloriously retro, heavily pixilated maze game, compete with 80's style synth music, asks you to find the water wasters in your house before the crocodiles get you.
Answer the questions about water waste to carry on with and complete the game.
Quizzes and puzzles about waste, the environment and the pollution createed by different forms of transport.
This quiz comes form the ever-popular BBC children's programme Blue Peter.
In this platform game, you play as an ice cube who must avoid melting in the sunlight while you try to escape to the ice platform.
It acts to help kids appreciate how climate change affects the antarctic and is causing the polar ice caps to melt.
Help the animals to sort their litter and put the correct items into the recycling bin.
Play as one of the the cute critters and learn what should be put into the domestic recycling bin and what should be disposed of elsewhere.
Join the cat and mouse duo as they clean up the river and recycle all the trash that they find.
The further that you get in the game, the more fish and weeds that you have to contend with, so use the power ups to clear the weeds and feed the fish to distract them!
A tricky logic game where you have to build pipes to take mater from a valve to the homes in the village.
While this game starts off easy, it soon gets really tricky, so another one for older kids with a bit of patience.
Recycle Roundup is a game from National Geographic Kids, where you have to clean up the park and put the correct items in the trash, the recycling and the green compost bin.
Wild Kratts is a kids TV show from PBS Kids whose aim is to educate children about species, biology, zoology, and ecology, and teach kids how small things can make a big impact on the environment.
In this Amazon themed platform game linked to the programme, you have to help find lots of animals that live in the Amazon Rainforest to get ideas for how to use their skill to create new super powers.
Smithsonian Science Education Centre from the iconic American museum, provides a game to teach kids about the habitats that different animals live in.
Put animals in their correct habitat and learn a bit about each animal while you do it.
Genuine old-school fun based on the 1990's animated TV series of the same name where a group of teens summon Captain Planet to help with environmental disasters.
In this game you fly the Eco-jet towards the enemy fortresses then play as the powerful Captain Planet himself as he fights his way against various ecovillains.
In this Hurricane simulation from SciJinks kids can learn how temperature affects the formation of hurricanes, helping them to understand how climate change may increase the number of hurricanes that we experience.
In this game you can learn how different temperatures in the atmosphere affect the formation of snow crystals.
Every snow crystal has a hexagonal shape, but they come in all different arrangements and sizes, depending on the air temperature when they form.
Complete this lovely jigsaw puzzle with an underwater theme, which can be played at different levels, depending how difficult you want it to be.
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