Sweet Greens
Your Earth Friendly Guide to All Things Green | Green Parenting | Eco Kids | Green Families
Today is our 16th wedding anniversary! I feel very lucky. I am so happy to be married to my best friend – it makes life so much brighter! I can’t wait to spend the evening with Jayson reminiscing on everything that we have accomplished in 16 years. It’s pretty wonderful.
Sometimes making a simple sandwich is just the easiest, but if your student is sick of seeing the standard PB&J in his lunchbox (or you’re sick of making it!) it’s time for a box-lunch upgrade! Read on for three new lunchbox standards that we love in our home and think you will too.
#1 Wraps and Burritos
Wraps are a great way to get a few servings of healthy vegetables into your kid’s day. I like to make extra chicken breast at dinner the night before and combine it with cucumbers, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots—you name it!—into a hearty wrap the next day. Make sure to include a healthy fat like avocado and a protein like garbanzo beans or feta cheese so that your student gets a balanced meal. Burritos are one of my all time favorite lunch foods and I haven’t met a kid yet who didn’t like them, too! Create a healthy version by combining black beans and brown rice and a sprinkling of cheese. Send some avocado slices, lettuce, or tomatoes in a separate container and the meal is complete.
#2 Homemade Soup
Hearty, homemade soups and chillis are a great winter lunch to send to school with your kid. The next time you make a big pot for the family, portion some out into jars or Pyrex containers and freeze or store the portions in the fridge. On lunch morning, simply heat up the soup and pack it in a thermos. Add a slice of seedy, whole grain bread and the meal is complete!
#3 The Re-done Lunchable
Instead of serving your kids the highly-packaged, preservative-laden lunchables that come from the grocery store, create your own using healthy ingredients. Put together whole grain crackers and cheese with fruit and nuts or hummus with carrots, celery, pita bread, and almonds for a more filling, much more nutritious alternative.
What are your favorite organic lunches to send to school with your little ones? What’s the new PB&J in your household?
There’s a reason why we don’t try to explain climate change and all of its affects in entirety to kids and instead tell them about endangered species, encourage them to recycle, and educate them about their health. The worldview of a school-aged child isn’t that of an adult’s (and maybe that’s a good thing!), and it can be hard for kids to understand the enormous, long-term impact of their actions. And yet all of our actions impact those around us, near and far, in ways we can’t even imagine and it’s important to start teaching kids to consider their community at an early age. So how can we send them back to school with a green living mentality? Read on to learn where to start.
Start Small
When kids might not even know their own weight, how can they be expected to understand the effects of the 18,000+ lbs of lunch waste they produce each year? Instead of trying to wrap their minds around an idea of that scale, start small. Send them to school with a non-toxic, stainless-steel lunchbox with reusable lunch bag and stainless steel water bottles, explaining that these items can be used over and over, for years, while paper and plastic lunch ware can’t be cleaned and must be thrown out every day. Give them the assignment of looking around the lunchroom and seeing how many brown paper sacks, sandwich bags, juice pouches, and snack wrappers get thrown into the trash each day. After a week, they’ll begin to understand just how much waste one student or lunchroom can really produce.
Hit Home
Because your student may not notice the litter in the park or the hundreds of plastic bags stuck in trees around town, he may not even think twice before tossing his bubblegum wrapper on the dugout floor at a baseball game, or his empty soda can into the trash instead of the recycling bin. By volunteering to pick up trash on a local street or at a park, you’re showing your kids how to respect beauty, the environment, and our communal spaces.
Teach Mindfulness
Does your kid wolf down dinner and dessert without once looking up, or while staring at the television, only to later complain of a stomach-ache or get a case of the grouchies? By teaching kids some simple mindfulness techniques, they can learn for themselves how healthy foods affect their bodies and how they feel after chowing down on junk. As a family, sit down for dinner together and take a deep breath before beginning the meal. Encourage kids to put down their utensils between bites, and after the meal is done ask children to notice their bodily sensations and feelings. Then ask again 30 minutes later. Children (and parents) might be surprised to notice that they didn’t really need that second helping of mashed potatoes and that a bag of cheetos before bed results in a junk food hangover. Using simple techniques like these help your children learn about health from the inside out, and the method will serve them well in other areas of life as well.
What green tips, concepts, and facts have your kids embraced? What questions do they ask about living healthy? Who do they think makes up their community?
Back to school time is here which means busier mornings and evenings. Finding the time to prepare and pack nutritious, homemade lunches every morning or evening for your kids can be challenging with homework, family dinner, extracurricular activities, and social time all packed into a few hours before bedtime. Some parents may feel frustrated to see half their carefully prepared lunch return home in the lunch box, too! There are so many reasons to teach your kids to pack their own lunch for school; read on for our top 3.
#1: It’s a Time and Energy Saver
In the beginning, especially with younger kids, you’ll put in extra time and effort while you supervise your child in the kitchen as she learns to use new utensils and skills. Once she gets the hang of it, though, she’ll take pride in the responsibility and the fact that she gets to make decisions about what to feed herself. After the confidence and excitement set in and her lunch-making skills solidify, you can sit back and relax while the lunches seem to make themselves!
#2: It Teaches Your Children Good Nutrition
One of the best parts about letting your kids pack their own lunch is letting them decide what they’ll eat tomorrow. In the beginning, it’s wise to let them choose just one item, like a side or drink, and work up to total decision-making power about lunch. During this process, try to let go a little. Kids who choose cookies over carrots time and again will eventually learn that they don’t feel as good come afternoon as they did when mom was packing a healthier option, and will begin to attune to their own bodies and intuitive cravings.
#3: It Gives them a Green Perspective
Kids who are involved with the entire lunch process—from preparing and packing to bringing home, emptying, and cleaning containers—are more able to notice the amount of waste produced by packaging and uneaten food. If they’re responsible for cleaning out their lunchbox before making tomorrow’s lunch, they’re also likelier to choose foods and portions that they know they’ll be able to finish the next day to save themselves the trouble of dealing with the stinky remnants they didn’t eat today.
Allowing your children to prepare their own lunches empowers and teaches them. If you stick with it, in time you’ll have raised a very healthy, efficient, lunch-making machine! Has your family passed off lunch-making duties to the kids?
Back to school is the perfect time of year to join the excitement and encourage your children to adopt good reading and learning habits. We strive for the best for our children which is why we spend so much time looking for the best schools and making sure teachers are exceeding our expectations. However, parents often forget how much power they have to influence their children’s learning potential. This can be done simply by making books an integral part of kids lives and introducing fun ways to learn!
Reading with your children helps them form a special bond with you as well as fosters academic excellence. Reading specifically improves speech, communication and language skills. Additionally, it gives children of all ages and walks of life an avenue for adventure and new experiences. A new way parents and families are bringing excitement to reading is by offering the fun of reading to their whole neighborhood through Little Free Libraries. Read on for my favorite Little Free Library design.
You may be asking yourself what is a Little Free Library?! It’s a “take a book, return a book” gathering place where neighbors share their favorite literature and stories. In its most basic form, a Little Free Library is a container full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share. Little Free Libraries can be found all over the states but don’t fret if your neighborhood doesn’t have one yet!
You can find simple instructions to build your own Little Free Library but know the options for this project are limitless! Your children can experience the joy of helping others by donating some of their already read books as well as enjoy the benefit of being able to read books other families donate. This is a win/win for all involved and a great way to get involved in your community as well as foster your child’s academic future. Perhaps spoken best by Dr. Seuss, “The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” Cheers!