Thursday, 12 March 2009
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Helping Our Children Help Earth
by Mama Fox 
Yesterday was Neighborhood Clean Up. A surprisingly small amount of people showed up at 10am to pick up trash around our neighborhood. Daylight Savings threw us for a loop and we didn't get out there until 10:45ish. But we were there and helping.
H and T carried the trash bags while Papa Fox and I, wearing gloves, picked up lots of cigarettes and beer tops, bits of plastic bottles and junk. E got the easy job of hanging out in the stroller. While we walked we talked about the importance of cleaning up trash, about recycling and the Earth in general. H was especially concerned about what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning, which lead into talking about gravity and magnetic fields. (I tell ya I have a smart almost 5 year old. Haha! His birthday is on Sunday! GAH!)
At noon, we wandered back to our starting point where there was food waiting for us.... barbeque, both turkey and beef hot dogs and hamburgers. Now, this is Texas and I expected as much so I brought I lunch for Ethan and myself. We sat happily munching on strawberries, blueberries and apple slices while chatting with the neighbors about the new flower market, a recent break in and how great the weather was (70s and slightly overcast). It was a nice morning out. (And I learned that Cliff Bars are oh so good and vegan. Woot!)
I think it is extremely necessary to teach our children how to care for the Earth because it is their inheritance. We are raising Earth's next care takers. We must take care of what we are passing down to future generations and make sure they have the tools to take over that care. We wouldn't throw an untrained person into a job and expect it to turn out good. We have the tools and the knowledge to change our environmental crisis and we should be teaching that to our children.
I think one of the best ways of teaching our children to be good stewards of our planet is to be good stewards ourselves. We are our children's best role model after all. We don't (usually) allow our children to trash the house yet we trashing our planet, our home. What kind of message is that sending our children? I feel we need to give the Earth some TLC and make sure our kids are watching and understand why we do it. Open up communication, watch Wall-E with them, enlist their help. We are doing it for them after all.Do you think preserving the Earth is important for our children's futures? What are ways that you teach your children about caring for the Earth?
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About the Author
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- From: mamafox
- Name: Mama Fox
- About Me: Hi y'all, I'm Mama Fox! I'm a young, optimistic homeschooling mama of three boys. This is all about our adventures and at times misadventures of raising little men in today's world and pretty much whatever else is on my mind. :)
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Comments (5)
Our kids are young, so we don't do too much active learning about taking care of the environment and why it's important. But we do try to lead by example. They definitely know what recycling is. We'll read books that have eco messages and stuff.
Megan is still small, but I do pick up the neighborhood on our walks. And we recycle what can and reuse other things that can't be recycled...I'm going over to the retractable clothesline rather than the dryer for most things...we're feeding our scraps to the earthworms... It's my hope that as she grows up with these things, they'll become the norm to her and she'll carry them on when she moves out of our home and through out her life.
The main topic of my blog on Xanga is all the things that our family is doing to be greener, and the kids are absolutely at the heart of it all. In fact, since working so hard to green up our family, I have now gotten involved in making our local elementary school greener by helping to run a school sponsored club. As you say, kids learn by example. It's amazing how many good habits they can pick up from us (and scary how many bad ones, too)! We take every opportunity to point out why we do things certain ways around the house to care for the Earth. We also encourage them to teach their friends to do more.....which hopefully gets other families thinking like we do! Thanks for cleaning up your corner of the Earth with your family!!
I think that teaching children to keep the Earth in good shape is fundamental in more than one way, as it teaches them many lessons all at once. I think that when they're older, they'll generally form their own ideas on what they want to do to help (or not help) out the Earth and all of that.
its important for everybody especially if you plan to live on planet earth for awhile. i think if we expect kids to "help the earth" and recycle than we need to do it ourselves as well. we need to be the role models than maybe kids will follow, if we dont do it ourselves but expect our kids to do it than it wouldnt be practicing what you preach.