“The green drive starts at your home”

We all hope to make this a better place for the coming generations to live in. But are we taking the adequate steps to walk towards our goal? We all have heard the proverb ‘Charity begins at home’ but we hardly take it seriously to work on it. This is our chance to make a difference and to do that we should first ensure that our children are developing environmental friendly habits. Here are some fun green living tips for your kiddos.

• Collect rainwater with your kids – We all know what is rain water harvesting but hardly some of us have implemented it at home. But you can do something similar with your kids. You can collect rainwater to water the plants as collecting rainwater with your kiddos is not only beneficial but also makes a wonderful learning moment for your children. You can talk to them about importance of water, water cycle and why is it important to keep our fresh water clean. You can get a rain barrel from your local hardware store or just have your kiddos run out and place buckets outside to collect the rainwater. Then, you can use it to water your plants.
• Garden with your kiddos – Kids love to see something they have planted grow into a plant. Whether you are gardening in your backyard, balcony or indoors involve your kids with you they will enjoy it. You can take this opportunity to ask them to plant a vegetable that they won’t try but once they plant it and see it grow they will try it. This is also the best time to teach your kids about soil and how all the minerals in the soil ends up in our bodies.
• Get your kids outside everyday – Taking your kids outside on daily basis is not only good for their health but it can also be a learning experience for them. Teaching your kids to connect with nature from a very young age builds their appreciation for the nature thus, they grow up to be good stewards to it.
• Clean up the local parks with your kids – Generally, we notice that our local parks become a dumping ground for litter, grab some gloves and garbage bags and take your kids along for this clean up drive and make it your family clean up game. Ask them to collect the plastic and paper scrap. You will see how fast you clean up and then play with them in the freshly cleaned park. This way you can teach them about their civic responsibilities and that littering is bad for the community and for the environment. Later you can sell the collected scrap to scrap buyers.
• Repurpose something with your kids – We all know various ways to repurpose our old stuff like cloths, plastic bottles, newspaper etc. but the important thing is, do we use that knowledge in our life? Some of does do while some of us don’t so, why not start this practice with your kids as a Sunday afternoon craft session. You can ask your kid to pull out something that he/she doesn’t use and make sure it is not something new that the kid doesn’t like and both of you can get a little crafty and repurpose it. While doing so you can talk to them about why it is necessary to repurpose and recycle things.

These little things you do with your kids will make him/her more aware about the nature and why it is important to take care of it. You can also ask your kids to help you collect all the scrap or old sellable stuff lying around the house so that you can sell scrap online and earn out of it.