Maureen Dennis, parenting and lifestyle expert, is here to talk about teachable moments at home for Earth Day.
A couple of things her kids enjoy includes regrowing things. The easiest one to do is romaine lettuce. When you get to the end bit of your lettuce take the very center and put it in some water and in the window. When it starts to grow roots, you can plant it in your garden once the weather warms up.
Maureen says her daughter started making her own masks, and a lot of teenagers have started doing this, but she is using old t-shirts, so the things that don’t fit her or her brothers and sisters and she is using it to make masks. It is a really fun easy way of using what you have in a different way.
Maureen Dennis says what she thinks is really interesting, is that in this time having that sort of new routine added. a lot of good changes to our lives. We have probably gone for more walks recently in last year than we have ever. We are not driving as many places; we don’t have many places to go. It is a great opportunity to have those conversations with our kids and to come up with more simple activities especially as the weather warms up and we can go outside. Kids love picking out seeds for flowers and vegetables; they love to get them started inside. They can check on them and see if they need water or don’t need water that day and that can continue throughout spring and summer as well.
You can also go out and have a nature scavenger hunt. We may have to get a little more creative with what our activities are, but it is actually by simplifying it and doing more things with nature and what we have around us.
We have to come up with a new way to explore the world and beyond. The good thing that has come out of this is there are a ton of amazing online resources. All of the art galleries and science centers, aquariums and even NASA has put out amazing resources online. Maureen Dennis says one of the ones her 9 year-old daughter did there in Houston involved Space. She goes on to say her daughter loves Space and NASA, so when you really think about how the earth is and Earth Day, Space is a really cool piece of it. One of the activities they have on the NASA site is the solar system. It has six different coloring sheets and with each sheet are different fun facts that go along with it. You can literally do this for a month or a month and a half and go through and learn each of the little things and then at the end you get this really cool poster of all the facts of the solar system that they can hang up in their room or put on the fridge.
For more information you can visit her website Maureendennis.com by clicking here
