Category Archives: Eco Friendly Parenting

Getting Out of the House

Have you taken much advantage of summer yet?

Getting out into nature is an absolute must so far as I’m concerned. I don’t much care whether it’s a trip to the beach, camping or hiking, but I love to get my family out and active.

throwing rocks

I’ll be the first to admit that this is not easy. It’s especially true in my case where we only have one car, so if my husband is at work the rest of us are limited to where we can walk to. No problem – the park is about 10-15 minutes away by foot, even with kids. And they do love the playground there.

But for serious, getting out of the house stuff, we haven’t done that well this year. Not the way I would like, at least. No camping trips yet, and none on the horizon. It’s just been a busy, busy summer.

We are taking a trip soon, but it’s to visit my dad, not to camp or anything like that. It’s been about 3 years since we went to his house (but we’ve seen him other times), so we’re really due for that as I see it. But I’m thinking if we can swing it, next year needs a nice, long camping trip. We’ve really done much too little of that.

What is your family’s favorite way to get out of the house?

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Greening the Kiddie Pool

I have to admit that I love my kiddie pool. It’s a great way to allow the kids to cool off in the hot weather we get here without turning on the air conditioner.

We have a fairly large kiddie pool. It’s one of the ones that inflates through three rings, and the water gets a foot and a half to two feet deep, and about six feet in diameter. Part of our backyard is wood chips that the landlords put in. I destest these, as they’re the wrong sort for walking on, and give splinters like mad, but it means we can put up the pool on an otherwise useless section of yard.

kiddie pool

It’s a lot of fun for the entire family and it has really helped my kids to comfortably advance their swimming skills. My son, at 2-1/2 has gone from clinging when we take him in a big pool, to propelling himself around just a bit.

Some of that’s scary, since he thinks he can do more than he can. But we’re aiming for twice a week at a big pool so that he learns quickly.

It’s helped my daughter improve too. She’s 5 and it’s just deep enough that she can practice her swimming. In a big pool she seems to now be inventing her own sort of breaststroke. Given that we weren’t able to sign her up for swimming lessons this year, I’m pretty impressed.

But I do always feel a little bit bad about kiddie pools. They aren’t the most environmentally sensitive thing to have. But I do what I can. Continue reading →

Making Green Fun for Your Kids

Childhood is a great time to learn about being environmentally friendly. It’s hard in many ways, as your kids see their friends live without thinking about how their actions matter, the toys they play with, the things they have.

The first step is to keep things age appropriate. You can teach children very young about some things. My 2-1/2 year old, for example, already knows the difference between the trash and recycle bins. He asks where to put everything.

girl with flower behind ear

My 5 year old is getting into reusing things. An amazing range of things are great for art projects. Old magazines, cardboard boxes, egg cartons and many other items have been saved for later projects. It saves a lot of shopping for ways to help my daughter be creative.

As they reach school age you can teach them by not sending lunches in disposable baggies or containers. At my daughter’s preschool, she was pretty much the only kid to bring her drink in a cup from home and snack in reusable containers. While these are still plastic, we’ll be using them for years rather than just once.

Some parts of green living are pretty easy on the kids. Throwing things in the recycle bin rather than the trash is pretty easy. Getting kids to reuse things, especially as they get older and more self conscious can be harder. The social pressures really add to the challenge.

Continue reading →

No Child Left Inside

I read about the new No Child Left Inside bill over at Green Options. The idea of this bill is to encourage schools to offer more in the way of environmental education.

In some ways I like this idea. Children should know more about the environment.

On the other hand, whose version? What if the teachers prefer the no global warming version of things and teach it that way. The one trouble I can see is that many environmental issues are very much subject to personal interpretation, no matter how much science is behind it.

Some basics are pretty easy to teach. Don’t leave your trash on the ground, pollution is bad and so forth. But I can see a lot of controversy coming around with this topic, just because there are so many opinions on the big environmental topics.

What do you think?

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Green Books for Kids

It’s a wonderful thing to encourage your children to think about the environment. Children absorb information easily and take it to heart. Reading to them is a great way to encourage them and teach them about the environment.

The challenge can be finding books that will entertain them without seeming like a lecture. Children love to learn, but they get bored if things are above their level or not fun.

The Lorax is one story with an environmental message that has long been popular. My daughter went through a phase of asking for that one almost nightly. Gumfounded is a more recent book, and a bit more direct to children’s experience.

My children are young yet, so I don’t have any experience with children’s and young adult novels with an environmental theme. But if you can keep your child interested in reading as well as in helping the environment, you’ve helped them to understand what can be a complex topic.

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