Kid-Friendly Activities to Make Earth Day Every Day

Earth Day doesn’t need to be limited to April 22 for you or your children. You can make Earth Day everyday by trying one of these six activities that start conversations about bigger topics.

Kid-Friendly Activities to Make Earth Day Every Day (Photo: Earth from space)

“What are we going to do for Earth Day this year?” I wondered to myself. While we try to embrace a sustainable lifestyle all year long, I wanted to make Earth Day a little special. It’s one of my favorite holidays, after all!

After poking around on some local websites, I found an event at the local nature center. But if you don’t have any organizations putting on Earth Day events, there are still plenty of options. Best of all, these ideas can spark new patterns to help you make Earth Day every day.

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Earth Week: Using Permaculture to Talk to Kids About Environmental Sustainability

It’s Earth Week – my favorite secular holiday! For an environmentalist, Earth Day is every day, but it’s still nice to recognize it. This week, my posts are all going to be on how to engage kids on environmental issues, from how to talk about climate change to fun activities that can spark long-term change. 

Using Permaculture to Talk to Kids About Environmental Sustainability-2

Communicating about environmental sustainability is astonishingly hard; inspiring people to take action is even harder. In fact, I spend a good deal of my professional career contemplating how to do this effectively. Add kids into the mix, with their limited knowledge of science and ability to handle “big issues,” and it seems near-impossible. Kim Payne of Simplicity Parenting actually holds climate change up as topic we simply shouldn’t discuss it with children because it’s too stressful.

Unsurprisingly, I disagree. We have an obligation to teach kids about climate change and other environmental issues, if only because they’ll be ones who have to deal with this crap in the future. Plus, there are plenty of kids who want to know about them and like with sex ed, it’s better to give them good information than misinformation. I’ve been an activist since my elementary school self dog-eared a copy of 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and I came out okay. (Right?) But Payne is correct that we often discuss climate change in ways that are disempowering and frankly, scary, for kids.

Instead, I recommend using permaculture as way to discuss sustainability. While permaculture has its roots (ha) in agriculture, it’s actually much broader. Essentially, it looks to structure how we live around ecological principles, helping us work with, not against, nature. It is based on three major principles: care for the earth, care for people, and return of surplus back to the system to meet the needs of the earth and people. I’ve been a fan of permaculture since I moved to D.C. and started volunteering with a Transition Towns group, a movement based on the idea of applying permaculture to entire communities. I learned more about how to apply it to teaching children from Jen Mendez from PERMIE KIDs when I attended her Rooting DC workshop last year.

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What I’ve Been Reading This Week

 

 

Toad in drainage

Photo of the week: A toad we rescued from the drain outside our basement window. 

More late nights breastfeeding, more reading than ever. This week, I’m obsessed with how children learn, how cars affect how we structure society, and working moms.

Lego is sponsoring research? I’m usually against corporate-sponsored research, but saying that children should mainly learn through play until age 8 is pretty awesome.

Simplifying is one of my main goals of the year, so the idea of slow parenting is very appealing.

Scandanvian-style outdoor preschools are becoming more popular in the U.S. and U.K. Wish we could afford to send Sprout to one here!

Outside Magazine has been one of my favorite magazines for ages and they’re providing some excellent coverage of parenting in nature, including Richard Louv’s new book, raising brave girls, and (again!) why Sweden is awesome.

Joking with kids and engaging in pretend play encourages kids to be creative. Based on how Chris interacts with them, Sprout and Little Bird are going to be absurdly innovative.

9 Must Have Outdoor Toys to Keep Kids Engaged – so classic.

I love eating food from a variety of cultures, so it’s good to see that my love of curry could lead to Little Bird being less picky.

“I so often am shushing you, my firstborn, setting you aside to run to brother’s aid as he needs me for the umpteenth time. I barely get you anymore.” I’m seeing Sprout more than ever while I’m on maternity leave, but I’m really worried about this when I have to go back to work.

Amazing series of portraits of real working moms.

We’ve structured so much of our society around cars that it’s hard to see how it affects us on a daily basis. From how our children play to our everyday safety, it’s time to rethink their role.

The day-to-day work of serving others can be deeply unglamorous. Let’s do the dishes together anyway.

Gardening is good for both the earth and those tending it.

Good article to read before you visit pretty much any historical location in the South.

Van Jones, green jobs extraordinare, talks comics.

For more articles and photos, follow me on Twitter and Instagram!

What I’m Doing Differently During My Second Maternity Leave

People say that moms are much more go-with-the-flow when it comes to the second child compared with the first, such as in this commercial. Much to my surprise, I actually do fulfill this stereotype. And it’s not just my perception – both my parents and in-laws remarked how much more comfortable I seem. While the fact that Little Bird is a better sleeper than his older brother and a fast physical recovery helped, so did the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the nearly three years of Sprout’s life. Here are some of the things I’m doing after Little Bird was born that I didn’t do the first time:

What I'm Doing Differently During My Second Maternity Leave

Encouraging people to visit: While welcoming visitors is the opposite of what most advice recommends, it’s been essential for me. I get cabin fever very quickly; I was getting antsy after a few days of being snowed in this winter. Postpartum, I have to deal with the double-whammy of not being able to bring the baby to public places before he gets his immunizations and the fact that exclusively breastfeeding him means I can’t leave for more than 45 minutes or so. With Sprout, I’m fairly certain this combination significantly contributed to some postpartum anxiety. Luckily, this time around I’ve had three different sets of friends visit, bearing news of the outside world and nice things to say about the baby. My friends understood that normal “host” etiquette was out the window and I was grateful for the company.

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Reflections on my Lenten Fast from Social Media

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

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Photo of the week.  Dressed for jumping in puddles at the park with Sprout!

Another day with a newborn, another multiple hours spent reading. Ah well, it could be worse. Thank goodness for iPhones! So far, I’ve read Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods and N.K. Jemison’s Fifth Season (so good, so many horrible things that happen to children), along with a whole host of articles.

I hate the phrase “children are small, the dishes can wait.” For whom? The dish fairy? This article’s author agrees with me, especially in the haiku “The dishes can wait / They are only young once / I hope you like ants.”

All of this talk by Bernie Sanders about the wonderfulness of Scandinavia has just made me want to visit. Although I already knew a lot of it, this article on parenting in Sweden has just further upped my enthusiasm.

The AV Club is my go-to website for pop culture reviews. Not surprisingly, their Field Guide to Parenting series, starting with an overview of trains, is fantastic. The section on the ideology of Thomas and Friends is snort-tea-through-the-nose-worthy.

I’m a giant nerd who is married to another giant nerd who is a big superhero fan. So naturally, some of that fandom has rubbed off on me. This article on times Marvel has gotten it right with their female characters is pretty great, even if they leave out Squirrel Girl and the new Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

I’m an older millennial, right on the cusp between that much maligned generation and the Generation Xers (who were also maligned in their own time). As I’m not in my early 20s, a lot of the millennial trend articles just sound really weird to me. Which is why this series on Fusion really struck a chord, from the parody Every New York Times Millennial Trend Story to the one on millennials who are not white, upper-middle-class, gentrifiers.

Privilege, especially white privilege, is a tricky and sensitive subject to talk about. The ever-brilliant McSweeneys puts its own hilarious spin on the “invisible backpack” metaphor. The Daily Beast tackles the Mighty Whitey trope  (oh, Eat, Pray, Love, how good and yet problematic you are) and this article on Patheos posits #BlackLivesMatter as a core concern of modern Christian theology.

As the daughter of a (now retired) schoolteacher, I am a huge believer in the importance of public education. So I’m really dismayed about the move towards charter schools, especially when they destroy the foundations of public schools like in Pennsylvania and in New Orleans post-hurricane Katrina.

The other big concern of mine in terms of schools is the focus on testing. Project-based learning seems to offer a lot of potential and this article on Edutopia has a great example of how the author worked with his son on a project to make a hospital for his dolls.

The mainstream environmental movement has been expanding in the past few years to really incorporate more social justice concerns, including racial discrimination. It can even include criminal justice, as this article from Grist about horrific conditions in New York’s Rikers Island prison shows.

For more articles and photos throughout the week, follow me on Twitter and Instagram!

Visiting the Park with a Toddler and Newborn: A Play in 3 Acts

Visiting the Park with a Newborn and a Toddler: A Play in 3 Acts. (Photo: A sidewalk with shadows of an adult and child)

Ever feel like you’re stuck in an absurdist play as a parent? Waiting for Godot with diapers and sippy cups. Goodnight Moon come to life.

This was especially true when for some reason, I felt the need to go to the park with my newborn and toddler a week after the baby was born. I’m not sure if severe sleep deprivation was getting to me or the air in our house was just that stifling, but I must have been suffering from some delusions to think it was a good idea…

Characters

Shannon: an overconfident mom of two
Chris: Her husband
Sprout, Shannon and Chris’s almost three-year-old
Little Bird, Shannon and Chris’s week-old newborn
Fellow park-goers

Act 1: Getting to the Park

Shannon and Chris are sitting on the couch, with Shannon holding Little Bird. Sprout is lying on the floor.
Shannon: Let’s go to the park!
Sprout continues to lie on the floor.
Shannon: Don’t you want to go to the park? We’ll bring Little Bird!
Sprout pushes his toy school bus across the floor.
Sprout: Pee pee poo poo, mommy.
Shannon: We’re putting your shoes on in 5. 1-2-3-4-5.
Shannon walks over to Sprout, grabs his hands and tries to get him to stand up. He goes limp, then stands up very slowly and mosies over to the couch. Shannon hauls Sprout up on her lap and put his sneakers on. Chris straps Little Bird into his car seat, who immediately starts crying.
Shannon: Do you think he’s hungry? I fed him less than an hour ago.
Chris (carrying the car seat out the door and snapping it into the stroller): He’s fine. Just go.
Shannon and Sprout walk outside. Shannon begins to push the stroller.
Sprout: No no no no no!
Shannon: What’s wrong? Please use words.
Sprout: I WANT TO DO IT!
Shannon: Do what?
Sprout reaches for the stroller’s handle.
Sprout: Want to push!
Shannon: Ah. Thank you for being so helpful!
Sprout and Shannon push the stroller for two feet, then Sprout stops and pushes on the foot brake.
Shannon: The stroller can’t move if the brake is on.
Sprout runs to the side of the stroller and peers in. He then runs to the back, takes off the brake, pushes for another two feet, and puts the brake on again.
Shannon: Seriously, what are you doing?
Sprout (looks into the stroller): Hi, Little Bird!
Shannon: You want to see him, but can’t from the back, can you?
Sprout runs back, takes off the brake, pushes the stroller and then repeats the whole process.
Shannon: You aren’t going to do this every two feet, are you?

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Guest Post on Pregnant Chicken: The Seven Stages of Picking a Name for Your Baby

While the physical discomfort was bad, the most stressful thing for me about pregnancy was picking a freaking name for the baby. (Especially this time around, when Little Bird’s labor was bizarrely quick. But that’s a story for another time.) As I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggles with this, I wrote a guest post called the Seven Stages of Picking a Name for Your Baby for Pregnant Chicken.

Besides labor, picking a name is one of the hardest things about having a baby. It’s rumored that there are couples who have a name for each gender picked out before conception. But for the rest of us, it’s a process fraught with uncertainty, frustration and confusion. We also kind of hope those prepared parents’ kid changes their name during a quarter-life crisis. While not everyone goes through these, here are seven common stages of naming a baby:

Read the rest at Pregnant Chicken!

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

Sunrise March 17 2016

Sunrise of the week. (Taken the day before Little Bird was born!)

This week, I was obsessed with constantly feeding my new baby! Thankfully, nursing a newborn for multiple hours a day plus burping means that I have an incredible amount of time to read. While I archive-trawled blogs when Sprout was born, I prepared a bit more this time. I downloaded multiple books and caught up on the many, many tabs open on my phone. So here’s just a sample of what I’ve been reading, from fun stuff to deeper articles.

“Walked a mile to nearest road.”  Six words that broke the author’s heart when she adopted her son and will break yours too.

When things go drastically, horribly wrong, here is some excellent advice on how to parent during and after a crisis.

With a small child (and now two!), we hardly ever get to the movies. But when we really want to see one, we often go separately. Zootopia was one of those movies and it was totally worth it. This review from Vox is a great breakdown why it’s not just a fun movie, but important commentary on prejudice and intersectionality.

“Turning away is not an option for people who have committed to the spiritual practice of showing up…. Compassion is your pain in my heart and back out through my hands.”

As a woman who was recently pregnant, all of the laws criminalizing behavior while pregnant are really terrifying. Even though I would never take any non-prescribed drugs while pregnant, my heart went out to the women described in this Mother Jones article arrested under chemical-endangerment laws.

On a happier note, profiles of ex-convicts that received training from one of my favorite charities, DC Central Kitchen, and now cook in local restaurants.

A Prayer for Mr. Trump, the Rage-Maker Whom We Do Not Like Very Much, and Also for Us, Who Could Use a Little Wisdom and Some Kindness and the Reminder That Hope, Who’s Been Hiding, Is Not Gone. We could use a Little Help.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most compelling and thoughtful writers on race and breaks down how the justice system has failed black families.

How Oxfam is shaking up international development, from investing locally to changing global policy.

Today’s News from Ilana Wiles’ husband is one of the cleverest things I’ve seen in a long time.

Climate change and mosquito bites covered in a funny and depressingly informative open letter.

Writing emails to certain co-workers that lack reading comprehension is something I don’t miss while on maternity leave. I’d love to send this article to help them translate what I really mean.