Earth Day 2009- Growing "Green" Kids

My first earth day celebration was in 1986 when my oldest son Josh was in the first grade. His school hosted many activities including beginning to recycle at his school. This project was sponsored by a number of "room mothers", including myself, and approved by the principle.









Today, 23 years later, I am enjoying introducing my granddaughters( 5 and 3) to gardening and a love of the outdoors. One minute they are playing with their dolls, dressing in high heels and make-up, the next catching minnows in a little branch running down our property, and digging for worms. You can see my granddaughters on my web page at http://www.gardenchick.com/ .



Earth Day is April 22 every year, and is a great way to reinforce your committment to use less energy, eat locally, and save our natural resources.

Here are some simple ways to introduce children to "green living"

Create a green living reward chart and receive stickers for participating in green activities.
Decide what your reward will be for a certain number of stickers.

Have them decorate a pot and place a houseplant in their room. Situate in the correct light for their plant and water it when it is thirsty.

Remind them to turn off the lights, television, stereo, and computer when they leave the room.

Turn off the water when brushing teeth. This will save a couple of gallons every day. Did you know Americans use 100 gallons of water each day, and that is twice the rate of other industrial nations

Purchase a resuable bag for your groceries. Keep in the car for those quick trips into the grocery store or local farmers market

Visit a local farmers market. On average, food travels over 1500 miles to get to our plate. Introduce your children to locally grown food, and discuss how this helps local farmers, saves gas, and is much more healthy.

Plant a garden. Even if it is small, or a container garden. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, onions, are some of the vegetables that can be grown in a container.

Plant a tree in your yard.

At the grocery store, look for products with recycled content such as toilet tissue, paper napkins, paper towels and facial tissue. We could save over 150,000 trees if each U.S. household replaced just one typical box of facial sheets with recycled sheets, 500,000 if each household replaced just one roll of 75 sheets of paper towels.

Buy school supplies made from recycled materials, and encourage the school to use recycled school supplies.

Use water bottles that are not disposable.

Have at least one all vegetable meal each week. A farmer uses an average of 6 gallons of water to grow lettuce, but 1,000 to produce a cheeseburger with lettuce. Feed for cattle is very inefficent to grow. When you do make your own burgers, use locally grown, grass fed beef. It taste better and is better for you.

Recycle and reuse: Recycle cardboard, plastic bags, paper, and aluminum cans. A cardboard recycling center on my way to work has one special bin to donate small amounts of cardboard to a local charity. Instead of buying containers for your kids rooms, have them decorate cardboard boxes to hold their pencils, supplies, jewelry pieces, cars, etc.... Donate used toys and clothes to a local thriftstore, or have a yard sale. Shop thrift stores and yard sales. Not only does it save money, it is reusing what someone else does not want.

Shop Wisely- Do you really need it?

Karen

www.greenandsave.com

www.kaboose.com earth day activities for kids