KEEP IT GREEN
The Best Eco-Friendly and Kid-Friendly Activities for Earth Day
It can be tough to figure out how to switch up family game nights. Kids can be very attached to their electronics, making it hard to get them invested in anything else. With Earth Day coming up this month, you have the perfect excuse to put down the phones and get outside to save the planet. If you’re looking for ways to spend time with your kids on Earth Day, try these eco-friendly family activities! You can teach your kids a lot about downcycling and upcycling through recycled art. Downcycling is when waste is recycled to become a new product, but there’s a loss of quality as a result. Upcycling is the opposite: Whatever you recycle becomes a product with a higher value. PICK UP TRASH AND MAKE ART WITH IT.
One way to upcycle is to create recycled art. Use old newspapers or magazines to create collages or papier-mâché bowl sculptures around balloons, jars, or your own custom shape with chicken wire. You can also use old plastic or glass bottles as beautiful hanging planters or create a memorable wind chime from jar lids, tin cans, plastic silverware, and old rubber bands. Gardening is one of the most rewarding ways to spend time outdoors. Your kids can learn about caring for another living thing and grow their own vegetables and fruits! A great way to start is to find out what’s in season in your area. If you don’t have an outdoor garden, you can pick out some indoor plants or create a hanging garden with recycled bottles! PLANT A GARDEN.
BUILD A COMPOST SYSTEM.
If you have a garden, the next best thing you can do is start composting at home! Did you know that you can compost your cardboard products? Instead of waiting for the recycling truck every other week, you can use your spare green and brown waste to create incredibly nutritious soil for your garden! Green waste includes vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, nutshells, coffee grounds, etc. Brown waste includes cardboard, dead leaves, paper egg cartons, wine corks, and more. Get a bin and maintain a green-to-brown ratio of 1-to-2. Layer, water, and turn the compost to keep it healthy. It can take anywhere from two months to a year, depending on what you put in and how often you turn it.
We hope you and your family have fun with these planet-loving activities! Stay clean!
Giving Kids the Tools for Success Even though every kid loves summer break, an air of excitement surrounds back- to-school shopping. Kids get brand-new markers, pencils, and other supplies to start another school year fresh. Unfortunately, not every kid gets to experience that excitement. In high poverty school districts, as many as 75% of students show up on the first day of school without any of their own supplies. Luckily, one company has risen to the challenge to make sure more students get the school supplies they need. Yoobi is a company that makes school supplies, such as markers and pens, but with a twist. For every Yoobi school supply purchased, they donate supplies to students who need them, particularly those in high-poverty communities. Company founder Ido Leffler thought of the idea while shopping for school supplies with his own children. He noticed “a distinct lack of vision and creativity” in most school supplies and learned later that 99% of teachers pay for supplies out of their own pocket. Armed with this information and some entrepreneurial know-how from previous ventures, Leffler decided something had to change. One survey showed that on average, elementary school teachers pay around $500 of their own money for school supplies for their students. In that scenario, no one wins — either students don’t have supplies or the teachers’ livelihoods suffer. With Yoobi’s help, though, some students will finally get the tools they need to succeed. Yoobi partners with the Kids In Need Foundation to find out which students need supplies the most and which teachers are most likely to have to pay for supplies out of pocket. Then, they send them Yoobi classroom packs, which have enough
supplies for 30 students, including pencils, crayons, glue sticks, scissors, and much more. These supplies may not seem like much, but simply giving students their own supplies can boost their confidence and desire to learn. To date, Yoobi has donated 65 million school supplies to nearly 5 million children in 173,000 classrooms. With their help, a lot more kids get to start of the school year stocked with tools they need to succeed.
2 WWW.POPALOCKKY.COM
Published by The Newsletter Pro • www.thenewsletterpro.com
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online