Earth Day: Don’t Throw Their Future Away!

A Native American Proverb: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children”. This means we need to protect the earth and teach our littles how to protect it as well. There is no better day to start teaching them how to respect and care for the earth than Earth Day. Our earth needs all of us to be more responsible so our children and their children have a place to grow up. It is our responsibility to instill the love for our earth. There are so many ways to be able to involve your littles in caring for the earth. Continue on to learn some things you can do with your littles to get them believing they can make a difference for the earth.

Lend A Hand, Save the Land

• Clean-up: 
  • Go to your favorite park beach or local lake and clean up the area. Safety first, always use gloves to pick up trash and stay with your little to make sure they are only picking up things that will not injure them. You can pick up the dangerous items for them. While you are cleaning up talk about littering and how bad it is for the earth. have them think of things they can say to others to help them realize littering is bad.
  • Contact your local Parks And Recreation to see if they have any clean up activities planned for your area and take your child to participate. Show them that if everyone gets involved we can make a big difference. Help them make friends with other children participating so they can talk to children learning the same message.

Plant it For Me

• Planting:
  • Plant a tree: Trees are crucial to our earth. They help to keep the air clean. Without trees the air will become to polluted for humans to breath. They are our natural air filters. So there can never be to many trees for our earth. While planting the tree, talk about how to plant trees to help them survive. Discuss why you are planting the tree, not just because it is pretty, but because it helps clean the air.
  • Plant flowers: Flowers make the world look pretty. They could be planted in a garden at you house or in a pot. Talk about how to take care of them and what they need to grow. What a great way to introduce gardening to your little.
  • Plant a vegetable garden: Planting a vegetable garden leads to so many opportunities for learning and conversation with your little. This can lead to  discussions about what plants need to grow and thrive. It can also lend itself to discussion on the importance eating organic food for your health and and the health of the earth. You can talk about the plants you are growing and that you will pick the food from them and eat it. Such great conversations can be had when planning and planting a vegetable garden.

To read more about gardening with littles.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

• Composting: 
  • Composting is a great way to reduce and reuse waste. When beginning a composting activity it is a great time to talk about how much waste people are putting in the landfills and that we will run out of places for our waste if we don’t help it out. Discuss how composting is reducing the food waste that goes into the landfill and can be reused to help our earth replace nutrients for plants to be able to grow. Children will love composting  Follow the link to some great composting ideas for children.
• Recycling: 
  • Most areas have a recycling program. Recycling also reduces the amount of waste that ends up in our landfills. These items can be reused to make other things. Children will enjoy sorting items that are able to be recycled. Have them practice with items you have saved to recycle. They can sort the recycling into paper, plastic, glass,  aluminum, and cardboard. This will help them to realize what is recyclable and help them pitch in and recycle items from the families waste.
• Crafts:
  • Two crafts that will help teach reduce, reuse, and recycle
    • Recycling Sculpture/mosaic: Take plastic, cardboard, and paper from the recycling and have them use the materials to make a sculpture or mosaic picture to display.
    • Plastic Bottle Terrarium: Use a 2 liter bottle to make a terrarium. This can help with discussions to reduce, reuse, and planting.

• • • Hand Print Earth: Paint the hand with blue and green paint and print onto paper. Cut out a red heart to glue in the palm. On top of the hand write Earth Day under that write I, then under the hand write the earth.

Read All About It: Don’t Forget the Books

Books are a wonderful way to tie in what you are doing. Earth Day books teach valuable lessons about taking care of our earth. Here are some of my favorites for spreading messages discussed in the post. Please share your favorite Earth Day books.

Thank You Earth  by April Pulley Sayre

Biscuits Earth Day Celebration  by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

Earth Day Hooray  by Stuart J Murphy

Compost Stew  by Mary McKenna Siddals

The Lorax  by Dr Seuss

It’s Earth Day  by Mercer Mayer

Why Should I Recycle  by Jen Green and Mike Gordon

Adventures of the Aluminum Can  by Alison Inches

Adventures of a Plastic Bottle  by Alison Inches

Thank you to Buddy Secor for use of you photo for our Feature photo.