Garden Journal for Kids (Printable)

garden journal for kids (printable)

I thought it would be fun to keep track of everything we harvest from our garden this summer so I created this printable for us to use. Feel free to print and use with your kids, too!

Posted at Small Footprint Fridays

 

 

50 Earth Day Activities for Kids

 

50 Earth Day Activities for Kids on mommygoesgreen.com

Earth Day is just a week away on April 22 and while I like to practice kindness to the Earth every day, it’s an opportunity to learn about new ways to care for creation and encourage others to do the same. Here’s 50 activities you and your family can do to celebrate!

Indoor Activities

1. Put together bird feeders from recycled milk jugs or using cookie cutters.

2. Make paper with seeds in it that you can plant.

3. Use potato stamps to make wrapping paper.

4. Create a papier-mache globe.

5. Use your crafting leftovers to make rainbows.

6. Gather your broken crayons and make them into new crayons. Or send them to an organization that will.

7. Do-it-yourself recycled paper.

8. Build a worm farm.

9. Learn how to sort items for recycling with this game.

10. Make a pencil holder from recycled objects.

[Read more…]

 

Simple Ways to Raise Better Eaters

simple ways to raise better eaters on mommygoesgreen.com

I do not profess to have this parenting thing down, I’m learning new things about raising little humans every day.  We’ve tried a lot of unsuccessful things and stumbled upon a few things that have really worked along the way.

One of those lucky stumbles was how our kids eat. They are happy to eat a good variety of foods, regularly. No, they don’t lick kale off their plate but for kids, I like to think they are better eaters than most. Here’s what has worked for us:

We aren’t a restaurant.

Whatever is being served for a meal is the meal. No substitutions. Occasionally I make things that the kids just don’t like such as chili so I will make an alternative.  My daughter has never liked potatoes so we don’t require her to eat them. If I make something a little too spicy, I add cream cheese, sour cream or coconut cream to cool it off.  But if the meal isn’t eaten, there isn’t a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to follow.

[Read more…]

 

Gardening Themed Easter Baskets

We will be heading south to warmer weather over the Easter holiday so I’ve been putting together a few things to celebrate while on vacation. I really like to fill Easter baskets with a few things the kids can truly use or would love to have, instead of tossing a bunch of candy in there. Because, honestly, that’s what the grandmas are for.

This year, I’ve decided to do each basket based on a theme: gardening for Sissy and sports for Bubby.  For Valentine’s Day, Sissy got a child-sized garden box. It’s small and portable since we plan to move in the next year.  If you want to build a more permanent box, Better Homes & Gardens has a great tutorial on DIY garden boxes for kids.

Now that the weather is turning, it’s time to get started on prepping the box and planting seeds. Right after Easter, we will put the seeds into our mini greenhouse and wait for the frost to pass. My guess is, that will be sometime in May. Then we’ll transfer the plants to her garden box and a few larger pots. She will have responsibility for her own box, with some oversight from me, of course.

Gardening Themed Easter Basket | Mommy Goes Green

To help Sis get excited about gardening and provide her with her own tools, this is what I’m putting together for her Easter basket:

1. Plain canvas tote for her to decorate herself

2. Child-sized garden gloves

3. Metal hand garden tools

4. Organic vegetable and flower seeds (I’m going with Seeds of Change this year)

5. Popsicle sticks (used to label each plant)

6. Peat pots to start our seed in

Here’s a few more ideas for your own gardening theme basket:

What is going in your Easter baskets this year?
 

Creating a Moon Journal with Your Kids

moon-journal

Happy Monday! I kinda love Mondays because they are a fresh start to the week. I’m over at Simple Homemade today talking about creating moon journals with my kiddos. From the post:

As a lifelong learner, I’m always looking for experiences to share with my kids where I am not only the teacher but the student as well. Constructing a moon journal has been just that. We’ve learned that each month the moon has a name and where the term, “once in a blue moon” comes from.

Click here to read the rest and share with me your favorite lifelong learning activities.