Learning sustainability isn’t just a random lesson from school that your kids can learn. It might even be better if they know about sustainability close to home so that it’s more incorporated into their lifestyle. With that in mind, here are a few examples of simple kid activities that provide opportunities to bring up sustainability.
1. Practice recycling at home
How your home deals with waste management is one thing that can affect its eco-friendliness. Therefore, if you plan on teaching your kids about sustainability, starting by teaching them how to recycle at home is a good idea.
Teaching your kids to practice recycling at home can be tricky, so it helps to prepare beforehand how you can simplify your language. It’s also a much more hands-on approach to teaching sustainability because you give them something to do when they recycle.
Practicing recycling at home and incorporating it into your lifestyle is the best way to teach your kids how to recycle.
Your kids will understand the concept of recycling bins and develop good habits such as reusing items whenever possible. It’s a skill they will take with them for a long time, even when they grow up.
Teaching your kids how to recycle isn’t just about putting things into the proper bins. You can show them fun ways to repurpose unwanted items in your home to create artwork from recycled materials.
You can turn your recycling lessons into DIY projects at the end of it by showing them how you can repurpose waste that would otherwise be thrown away.
2. Pick up litter
Instead of letting your kids fall into the habit of picking up trash after they make a mess, you need to teach your kids to pick up litter as a responsible habit. It’s less of a mental load for you once they start growing up because you introduce them to the fact that keeping the home clean is everyone’s responsibility.
One of the key benefits of getting your kids into litter-picking is that it makes them more responsible.
When children actively keep their living spaces clean, they will better understand and appreciate their responsibility in the house.
Moreover, kids would develop empathy and compassion for nature and wildlife when they understand the effects of pollution on the ecosystem. To make them fully understand that it will require your careful guidance as a guardian of the overall impact of pollution on the ecosystem.
You can use diagrams, but make sure that your explanations are appropriate and easy to understand for your kids. Otherwise, your concepts might go over their head, so adjust your descriptions.
3. Grow a garden together
If you’ve got a green thumb and want to get a garden, consider inviting your children into that activity.
Growing a garden with them is a long-term commitment, but it’s a great way to incorporate some real-life lessons along with their education that they can take with them for a long time.
Take it slow and understand that it will take some time before they can garden. However, if you stay consistent with it, they might develop a green thumb or learn to appreciate the environment and find something charming about it.
Your kids will learn to care for plants, water them regularly, and observe their growth over time. Aside from that, it will also help you have something to bond over.
Other benefits would be that you’ll get some plants that you can enjoy by admiring them because of their beauty, or you might even get food from them that you and your family can eat.
4. Go on a nature walk
The time you spend with your kids is a great chance to impart lessons about bonding with them. If you want to do a simple activity with your kids that gets you exercise, consider going on a nature walk with your kids.
By going on a nature walk, you can get some exercise, and your kids can spend some time outdoors while getting that exercise.
During a nature walk, you can explain and point out various aspects of the trail and relate them to sustainability topics and nature.
They can learn about different plant and animal species, and you might even cultivate a deep interest in biology with that.
Ideally, it would be best to consider doing a nature walk on a local hiking trail to look into local plants and animals. You can then turn it into some scavenger hunt for your kids, where if they find these plants and animals, they can mark them off on the scavenger hunt list.
5. Start a compost pile
If you have a much older kid who wants a more involved description of sustainability, consider starting a compost pile. However, one thing to note is that worms can start appearing in your compost pile over time, so make sure your kid is the kind that isn’t too afraid of that to make for a productive discussion.
You can tell your kids how to start a compost pile, why you need one, and then start making one together. Your compost pile can be as active and involved or as passive as you want.
It can be challenging to balance the compost pile correctly, so ideally, you should have some experience before starting a compost pile.
6. Harvest rainwater
A fun and small activity that you and your kid can do during the rainy weather would be to harvest rainwater.
You can get them to join you in setting up the different rain buckets to collect rainwater, which they can observe during the rainy season. And then, during the sunny days, you can ask them to get water to help water the plants in the garden.
Conclusion
These simple activities all involve improving your household’s lifestyle to make it more sustainable. Aside from that, it showcases opportunities and activities where you can teach your kids about sustainability in a way that’s more authentic and involved in how you live your life.
If sustainability and being eco-conscious you want more embedded into your lifestyle, consider taking in these activities with your kids so they can also adopt that into their lives.
