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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. 

You can even recycle your shoes!

Springtime means cleaning out closets to make room for summer clothes. But what do you do with all those old pairs of shoes? Believe it or not, even shoes are recyclable! They are chopped up and made into new basketball courts, tracks, fields and playgrounds. Drop those old sneakers off at a shoe recycling center and you might just find yourself running on top of them next year.

To find out where you can drop off your shoes visit the Nike Reuse a Shoe website or RunforthePlanet.com.

Photo Copyright the Arbor Day Foundation

Hey Kids!

Did you know that last week was Arbor Day? On Arbor Day, people all around the country plant trees in their communities. If you haven’t planted a tree, it’s not too late! Trees do many wonderful things for the planet, like filtering carbon dioxide from the air and giving us oxygen to breath. When planted near a house, trees provide shade that cools the home in the summer, helping to save energy. Planting trees native to your area is a good idea. They require little maintenance and provide homes and food for the creatures in their ecosystem. To learn more about how you can get started planting trees visit the Arbor Day Foundation.

Hey Kids! Too Young to Vote?

You might have been too young to vote in the recent presidential election, but don’t let that stop you from voting with your light switch for Earth Hour 2009. On Saturday, March 28 at 8:30 PM, as many as 1 billion people around the world will turn off their lights in a universal vote to stop global warming. The World Wildlife Fund will present these votes at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this year. At this important meeting, governments from all over the world will gather to decide how to fight global warming.

Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia in 2007. 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. The following year, Earth Hour went global, with 50 million people world wide sending a powerful message against global warming. Important landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Sydney Opera House, Rome’s Colosseum, and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all went black. 

This year, you can VOTE EARTH just by switching off your lights.

 

 

Replace incandescent bulbs with energy efficient ones

Switch to Energy Saving Light Bulbs 

One of the best things you can do for the planet is also one of the simplest. If every home in America replaced one traditional incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (known as a CFL), we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year, and prevent the CO2 emissions equivalent of nearly 800,000 cars from entering the atmosphere. These energy-saving bulbs last 13 times longer and use only a quarter of the energy as traditional light bulbs. Now just imagine what a difference it would make if you changed all of the light bulbs in your house!

Hey Kids!

The toys at your friend’s house always seem so much cooler, don’t they? That’s probably because they’re new to you. Half the excitement of getting new stuff is simply the thrill of having something different to play with or read. That thrill tends to quickly wear off, and soon your favorite new toy will end up in a pile in the closet or under the bed. One great way to get new toys and books and keep your mom from screaming “CLEAN UP THIS ROOM!” is to have a toy and book swap. This is an easy activity you can organize with your friends, neighbors or classroom. Gather toys, books, and even clothes that you no longer want but that are in good shape and ask your friends to do the same. To make the swaping fair, give everyone a number to determine the picking order. Number one chooses first for the first round of picking. Then the order reverses for the following round. By having a swap, not only do you get to bring home all new stuff, (well, new to you at least!) you’ll also help prevent pollution and save the energy and resources that are used to make toys.