Little Green Books - Little Green Blog

Know somebody who deserves recognition for their efforts to take green to the mainstream? The Daily Green’s Heart of Green Awards honors celebrities and stalwarts of the environmental movement. Like in years past, they are looking to the public for nominations for a Local Hero. Nominating your friend, teacher or child is a great way to show your appreciation for all of their efforts in making their communities green. Best of luck!

Heating your home creates greenhouse gas emissions, whether your family uses electricity, home-heating oil, or a woodstove. In fact, heating and air–conditioning devours more than half of the energy that an American home uses. Making door snakes is a fun way to defend our home from drafts that leak from under doors and around window sills.

Here’s what you can do:

Make a door snake that will fend off drafts, keeping rooms warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Here’s what you’ll need:

One yard of fabric (scraps work great)

Small piece of felt or ribbon for the tongue and eyes

Masking tape

Sand or fine gravel

Scissors

Pins

Measuring tape

Fabric glue

Funnel

And here’s how you do it:

1. Measure the width of the door.
2. Cut out a fabric rectangle that is about 1.5” longer than the width of the door and 7” wide.
3. Turn the fabric upside down and fold in half lengthwise.
4. Glue the long end and one short end, leaving a 1 inch border. Make sure to leave one of the short ends open!  If needed, hold the seams in place with tape or pins until the glue has dried.
5. Use masking tape to seal the seam shut so that the sand won’t leak out.
6. Turn the material inside out so that the other side of the fabric is showing. Using a funnel, fill the snake with the sand.
7. Glue the last end shut.
8. Cut out the tongue and eyes and sew or glue them onto your snake. You can also use googly eyes or buttons if you have them. Add any other embellishments you can think of—like spots, stripes or even a rattlesnake tail!

Creating homemade decorations was my favorite holiday activity growing up. Coming up with new ways to make gift wrap, gift tags and ornaments from things found around the house and around the neighborhood was part of the challenge and the fun. With being green on all our minds this holiday season, we have an even greater reason to be resourceful and to look to nature for inspiration. Here are some of my favorite projects you and your children can do together:

Green your gift wrap:

Save money on all that gift wrap that ordinarily gets ripped to shreds and thrown away. Make your own gift wrap by sprucing up paper grocery bags or recycled brown paper. Create nature stamps by coating leaves and flowers with non-toxic paint and stamping them on the paper. You can also find treasures from outside and glue them right onto the paper, or simply color and paint your own designs. For gift wrap that is reusable year after year, try wrapping your gifts in fabric Japanese style using a furoshiki. Click here to learn how to wrap virtually any gift shape in a furoshiki. If all that tying and twisting has gotten your mind in a knot, simply secure the fabric with a bow.

Green your labels:

Gather holiday cards you have received and let you child cut gift labels and name cards for the dinner table. He or she can simply cut off the written message and keep the cover image or cut the image into sections to make little tags. You can cut fun shapes like stars, hearts and trees to give the image new life. Or attach a ribbon and viola! You have an ornament!

Green your decorations:

Bring nature in from the cold to add life to your holiday decor. Evergreens, pine cones and berries make beautiful garlands, centerpieces and accessories to gift wrap. Gather dead vines to make a wreath that will last for years. Pine cones can be placed in a bowl and splashed with cinnamon and clove to add a nice aroma, or used to hold those homemade place cards previously mentioned at the dinner table. Remember to return these items outdoors when you are done so that they can biodegrade back into the soil and become part of next year’s evergreen boughs and berries.

Hey Green Parents!

Nothing says Christmas like a beautiful tree covered in chemicals, right? Wrong! Sadly, many trees, that timeless symbol of Christmas, are dangerous to your child’s health. Some farmers use 40 different pesticides, as well as chemical colorants, when growing christmas trees. The good news is that there are now a number of tree-farms that sell pesticide-free trees, so ask your local Christmas tree seller, or search for an organic tree farm near you.

If you want to go the extra mile and ensure lasting memories, you can purchase a tree with roots still intact. Once the holidays are over, you can plant the tree in your backyard or donate it to a local organization and watch it grow for years to come. To learn more about trees with their roots intact, click here.

America Recycles Day November 15th

America Recycles Day (ARD), November 15th, is a day dedicated to educating and encouraging Americans to recycle and buy recycled products. Now in its 12th year, ARD has grown to include millions of supporters who have pledged to increase their recycling habits and to buy products made with recycled materials.  Volunteer coordinators across America are organizing events in their schools and communities to educate and inspire others to recycle.

To become better informed about recycling, to take the recycling pledge, or to sign up to create your own ARD event, visit www.americarecyclesday.org.

Indoor seedlings

Welcoming in autumn usually means saying goodbye to your garden. But it doesn’t have to be that way! You can keep your blooms blossoming all year long by growing seedlings right in your window sill. Collect plastic yogurt cups or cut an empty milk carton in half to use as a container. Fill them with soil, and carefully plant some flower seeds. Be sure to keep your seedlings moist and sit back and watch them grow!

I hate to break it to you, but it’s about that time of year. Time to put away the golf clubs and bbq and break out the # 2 pencils. While you are preparing this year’s curriculum you might want to consider what a big influence you can be in getting kids to think green. Planet Green has a comprehensive guide to going green at school that can help you accomplish small tasks that make a big impact. Check out their Top Green Teacher Tips for ideas on greening your classroom. For inspiration in implementing green into your curriculum, take a look at their 15 Projects for Green School Teachers.

And for some more useful teaching tools, check out these downloadable Little Green assets and activities.

Have a great teaching green idea of your own? Share it with the Little Green Blog!

Hey Green Kids!

Mother’s and Father’s Day may have come and gone, but it’s never too late to help out with the household chores. In the summer, you can get the sun and wind to pitch in too by hanging your clothes outside to dry. Sun and wind are both renewable resources, which means they will never run out!  Line drying one load of laundry prevents about 3.35 pounds of C02 emissions by saving the electricity it would take to run the dryer.

Butterflies can be deceiving. Their beautiful patterns and delicate wings make them seem like they are all for show, but they are actually very important to the health of gardens. When they visit a flower to drink its nectar, they help to pollinate it by spreading pollen from one part of the flower to another. Insects who do this are known as pollinators, and ensure that our plants continue to grow month after month and year after year.

Did you know that you can observe beautiful butterflies right from your own backyard? Here’s what you do…

– Butterflies love nectar! Talk to your local nursery to find out which nectar flowers are native to your community. Plant a variety in your yard or in in pots on your window sill.

– Slurp, slurp. If you look very carefully, you’ll see that butterflies drink nectar through their proboscis, a long straw-like snout.

– There are over 700 species of butterflies in North America, how many can you find in your neighborhood?

You can also observe butterflies at public museums and gardens all over the country. To find an exhibit in your area, click here.

© Norman Rockwell

Hey Green Parents!

For many families, piling suitcases, kids and even cats and dogs into the car for your summer vacation is a yearly tradition. You and your family can green your car trip and get the summer off to a cool start by trying these simple steps:

1) Don’t idle. Have you ever walked behind a car in a parking lot that was sitting with it’s engine going? Cough! Cough! Idling causes unnecessary pollution. It’s a good rule of thumb to turn off your engine when parked for more than 30 seconds. The best way to “warm up” your car is to drive the vehicle and it will be “warmed up” in 30 seconds.

2) Lighten up! Get that junk out of your trunk. Driving around with unnecessary weight makes your car less fuel efficient.

3) Be a smooth operator. Avoid jerky starts and stops and use cruise control to maintain a steady speed. And slow down! Your car uses less fuel when driven close to the speed limit.

4) Keep it in tune. Get regular tune ups and make sure your car’s tires are properly inflated to boost it’s MPG.

5) Check your cap. Many cars have missing or broken gas caps which cause gas to leak and harm the environment.

6) Don’t be a drag. Remove bicycle and ski racks when not in use, and keep those windows closed when driving on the highway to reduce drag and improve your fuel economy.

7) Make a plan, Stan. Plan your route to avoid sitting in heavy traffic.