Turn your kids green
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 1 » The goods » Turn your kids greenTen ways to tint your kids mint
1. GET THEM OUTDOORS
In order to care about their environment, kids need to connect with it. Whatever the weather, go for a walk, build a hut, send them to play in the mud. You’ll be doing everyone a favour.
2. GROW YOUR OWN FOOD
Whether it’s a full veggie patch or just a tomato plant on a windowsill, watching a seed transform into something you can eat is pure magic – and increasingly is considered an essential skill.
3. MAKE THEM RUBBISH MONITOR
Teach your kids the recycling basics and watch them lap up the power. Anyone found putting paper in the bin will now have to answer to them.
4. BUILD (OR BUY) A WORM FARM
Worms are easy-care pets with the added advantage of eating your food scraps. Kids love waiting to see what the worm pee looks like … and trying to serve it up to you as wine!
5. GIVE THEM NATURAL
MATERIALS TO PLAY WITH
This isn’t middle-class snobbery: wood or fabric toys last longer, are less toxic and develop a child’s appreciation of the natural world.
6. SEND THE TV ON HOLIDAY
Radical though it sounds, a break from the TV gives kids a chance to develop their own entertainment, and a break from all those ads.
7. ENCOURAGE WILDLIFE
INTO YOUR GARDEN
Create a log pile, install a bird box, get a swan plant. All children love watching creatures emerge from holes or cocoons.
8. PICK UP LITTER
Off the street, the park or the beach. It’s not a nice job, but it will make them think twice about what they throw away and turn them off ever buying bottled water.
9.MAKE THEM WALK
To school, the dairy, down the beach. The car should be an exception rather than an essential every time you leave home.
10.USE THEM AS DONKEYS
When you forget your eco-bags, get them to carry the shopping for you. Remember it’s not child labour, it’s education!
