Instilling Green Habits in Your Children

How do you teach your children about conservation, sustainability, and recycling?  Those are big words that young children can grasp if presented to them in the right way.  Instilling green habits is about teaching children positive ways to cook, craft, garden, and explore the world around them.  Earth Day is a great time to think about some ways you can instill green habits in your household.

    One of the most powerful ways to influence children is to set an example. If you talk about eating veggies, take your child to a farmer’s market and plant your own garden (most children love helping with all aspects of planting a garden).  If you talk about enjoying the outdoors, take your children on a hike. If you recycle, have your children take part in the recycling process. Children love to sort.

    A great hands-on way to introduce children to the idea of re-using  and upcycling items around your house is by creating eco-art. Using items around the house that you might otherwise throw away like plastics that you can't recycle or fabric scraps and create art with them. Some eco-art examples are: Toilet paper rolls and old red tissue paper to make trees, corks and foam to create floating sail boats, take old milk jugs and make whales or masks out of them, use old CDs and feathers to make dream catchers.

   Green your school lunches.  Brown paper bags and throw-away plastic baggies add up to a lot of trash. Buy a lunchbox free of lead and, if they don’t already come with it, reusable sandwich bags, cloth napkins and a thermos. Just by eliminating all that daily wasted plastic and paper, your child could save 67 pounds of garbage a year. And don’t forget to lead by example and start taking your own lunchbox to work.

Dorinda's shop, Raising Green Kids, offers eco-friendly products for your family. Follow her on Facebook and twitter and at her blog.

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Ice Cube Painting

By Cori of Peace, Baby! Batiks

My son really likes to paint, so I’m always looking for different methods of painting. I don’t always want to get into the messiness of finger painting – especially indoors -- and water colors aren’t always as much fun as the bright colors of poster paint.

I saw ice painting demonstrated one day while we were watching Sprout, and I was intrigued. I modified our activity a bit from the directions posted online, using watercolor paper instead of paper towels and cardstock. I like the heaviness of watercolor paper; it can take a lot of paint!

The night before you want to paint, prepare your ice cubes. Put a little poster paint in the bottom of the cubes of an ice cube tray. Fill with water and mix well. Add half of a craft stick to make a handle. Pop into the freezer and let them set overnight. We’ve had success with solid colors as well as glitter paints.

When you’re ready to paint, take the ice cube tray out of the freezer and let them sit for a few minutes before trying to get them out of the tray.

Pull the cubes out, give each kid a piece of watercolor paper, and let them go! First, the kids rubbed the cubes on the paper.

When they were fresh from the freezer the colors were lighter.

Then, as the cubes thawed, the color went on thicker and darker.

Then, the boys discovered pieces of the ice cubes fell off if you hit them on the paper or pressed them like a stamp. By the end, we had soaking wet, colorful pieces of art!

Variation: In honor of Earth day, I made green, blue, white, and silver glitter (just for fun!) paint cubes and cut our watercolor paper into circles.

My son discovered it was fun to paint his hand and then stamp it onto the paper.

My son told me his painting shows Earth right after it was formed. (He’s a bit of a space and planet nut.) Mine shows Earth later in its developmen, or so he tells me. J

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