Who doesn’t like the outdoors. One should take it upon themselves to make an effort and do their part in preserving nature’s beauty. It’s a boon to live in a place blessed with a bounty of scenic beauty. For those who appreciate this beauty it is not easy to watch these surroundings get disturbed and deteriorated by those who don’t seem to care about the natural environment.
In this situation as parents it would be a good decision to take the first step and do better in how you protect and preserve the environmental sources. Reducing the ‘carbon footprint’, making use of green power, and recycling are issues that everyone faces on a day to day basis.
Children are your biggest asset when it comes to enhancing your efforts to help improve the environment, ensuring that they are aware of the pressing issues about the subject of concern is key. Here are a few ways in which you can get them involved and make them environmentally aware.
- Read with Them
Make it a practice to read about the environment and the issues related, along with your children. This helps them in understanding the importance of saving and protecting the environment. You can do this either via subscriptions or by ways of a family trip to the library.
- Lead by Example
As parents leading by example is the best way to inculcate a sense of value in your children. By making a commitment to personally achieve a greater level of environmental consciousness you can interest your children to do the same. Things you can do are, start recycling yourself in support of recycling, use compact fluorescent lights, walk or ride a bicycle instead of taking the car out, and creating your own compost to grow your own fruits and veggies will lead the way to making your children environmentally aware.
- Be a Part of Environmental Projects
Involving kids in environmental projects of sorts is always a fun way of getting them involved in a good cause such as this. This activity can be something as simple as a neighbourhood newspaper drive where you collect newspaper from your neighbours and send them to a recycling facility or even setting up a home compost operation. You could organise a litter clean up in your gated community or build bird houses in the park and even carry out a water conservation project in your homes.
- Plant trees
Whatever opportunity you get, grab it with all your might and go ahead and plant a tree, it doesn’t matter if it is in your own house or the local park or the sidewalk. This will give you a chance to explain to your children the importance of trees and how they clean the air when well planted. They may also create a situation where you are able to reduce the energy that is consumed by a building in the area.
- Environmental Websites
Take a look at websites that talk about the environment and the related issues. This will enable them to carry out stimulating conversation when in a public gathering.
- Let That Green Thumb Flourish
Gardening has this magic that it does on children. They seem to love it, and it instils among them a sense for nature, the cycles of life and the law of harvest. The whole act of gardening starting with planting, nurturing, watering, caring for and finally harvesting gives them the ability to appreciate nature, the earth and the environment.
- Spend Time Outdoors
The idea of camping trips with the family sounds pretty tempting doesn’t it? Go ahead and take that long overdue holiday and spend it with your family outdoors. You have a wide variety of activities to choose from, starting with hiking, fishing, picnicking, boating, skiing, and various other activities. This gives you the opportunity to teach environment principles while getting a first-hand experience of nature with the people you love the most, making it a moment of bonding.
Taking out time to talk to your children about the environment is an investment like no other, in terms of time as well as money.