How to Have Earth Day Every Day

Earth Day should be every day with kids. You can encourage your kids to be Earth conscious at an early age. Understanding how to help the Earth is important. You cannot begin too early with children. Even toddlers can enjoy craft projects from used items in the home such as egg cartons, milk cartons and soda bottles.

The first step in encouraging your child to be Earth friendly is to practice it in the home. Children learn by example. They love to model caregivers, siblings and parents.

Talk to children daily about nature around them. Talk to them about the trees, shrubs and even the grass. With toddlers and young children tell them about how the birds live in the trees or the ants have a home in the ground. You can keep it fairly simple but it starts the learning process that the Earth is more then just human beings.

Talk to your child as you do things. Let them know that you are using the rinse water from the dishes to water the plants outside or container gardens inside. Even have the children help you plant container gardens to decorate the home. You can have toddlers take a half cup of rinse water that you give to them and let them water plants. You might even get them a small watering can that you can fill for them.

Have kids help sort the recyclable items. When they ask for a paper towel hand them a wash cloth and tell them that we're saving a tree. On holidays and celebrations plant trees, flowers or shrubs in the yard or in container gardens for apartments in honor of the special day or event. You can start seedlings in cardboard egg cartons.

If you do self check-out have the kids help to bag the groceries in paper bags instead of plastic bags. Let's hope that your store has recycled paper bags. If you use plastic bags, have kids help gather them up once a week to return to the recycle bin at the grocery store.

Research in the library and on the internet for craft projects to do with kids using materials already in the home such as milk jugs, soda bottles, toilet paper rolls and egg cartons.