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As a family of five I am quite aware of the amount of waste we put into this earth and am always looking for ways we can reduce it. Teaching my children to be more conscious of their decisions when its comes to conserving energy is very important to me. There are so many small and effective ways to teach our children to live a green lifestyle and hopefully someday grow into adults that will continue to practice those habits. If you are sitting there reading this and thinking to yourself “well… what can i do to teach my children to be more green?” Well lucky for you I have come up with 5 easy steps kids can take to be more green! They’re very simple and fun changes that your family can make to be more green!

Step 1: Teach Them To Recycle: I think one of the easiest changes your children can make and help participate in is the recycling! Teaching and explaining to them what can go into the recycling bin, why it’s important and what they do with it will give them an even bigger reason to want to help. You can even turn this into a game, challenge your children to see who can place the most recyclable items in the bin each week.

Step 2: Teach them to turn the lights out when they leave the room: This has to be one of the steps that I personally struggled with teaching my children for awhile. It took a lot of reminders and being persistent on my part. I felt like I was constantly shouting from the other room “turn off that light” each time my children would leave a room. It was discouraging for awhile and I felt as if I would spend the rest of my days running around the house, shutting lights off. Thankfully this wasn’t the case and my constant reminders finally stuck! I also did a great deal of explaining to them the importance of conserving energy, which included a book we checked out at the library. Before I knew it I was hearing my children shout to each other “turn that light off.” It’s the little victories in motherhood, hehe!

Step #3: Don’t leave the water running while brushing your teeth: I have to admit that I am very much guilty of doing this not only when brushing my teeth, but also when doing dishes. I have been trying to be more aware of the amount of water I am wasting when I do this. Teaching my children to keep the faucet off while brushing their teeth will hopefully break them of the habit early! They have been very receptive to brushing their teeth this way and hopefully you have just as much luck with that as I did!

Step #3: Reuse scrap paper: My husband unfortunately has to print out a lot of papers for work, something we can not change. However, we can do something about all of the paperwork he no longer needs and that is to reuse it! Anytime my kids ask if they can color, I run down to my husbands office and grab a few sheets of scrap paper for them to color on. Whether they use the backside of the paper, or color right over the printed side, they truly do not care, they just want to doodle! They even make fun drawings and games out of the stuff printed on the paper and it keeps them quite entertained. Another really great thing that my husband has been doing with their easel is taking scraps of paper they have already painted on, paint over it with a solid color, and let the kids paint another picture once it is dry. You would be very surprised how many paintings that kids have been able to make on just one sheet of paper, it has saved us a ton of money on painting paper!

Step #5: Switch to Energizer EcoAdvanced batteries: This is brand new product is the very first battery on the market to use recycled batteries/materials and are Energizer’s longest lasting alkaline ever! I have three kids and a ridiculous amount of toys that requite batteries. We have begun replacing all of the toys that need AA batteries with the new EcoAdvanced batteries (these are also available in AAA) and it feels great knowing we are using a recycled product!

I was able to find these awesome new batteries right out front at my local Walmart near the checkout lanes!

I am so pleased that more companies are making changes to their products and embracing the green lifestyle. This is the only planet we have and it is up to us to ensure it’s a safe and clean one for the future generations… this begins with showing our children how they can be green! I would love to know some ways you teach your kids to be green!

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