5 ways kids can protect the planet

Millennial parents looking for STEM toys want to prepare their children for the future. Today’s kids will also need to understand environmental concepts!  Industries as diverse as manufacturing, government, and healthcare want people who can find creative solutions to ecological challenges and protect the planet. By building early environmental literacy skills, you’ll give your child a great start!

Green activities for kids

You begin teaching a child to care for others with small gestures, like saying thank you. You can use the same strategy to teach them to care for our world! By practicing little green habits, they will become environmental stewards. Here are five ways that even toddlers and preschoolers can make a difference:

1. Reuse and pass along

When decluttering, help your child select toys and clothes in good condition to give to neighbors or charity. Learning to donate instead of dumping is a wonderful habit to teach early. In addition, it’s important to use secondhand things yourself, to show your child that used items have value.

2. Sort out recyclables

Young kids love being helpful, and sorting waste is a hands-on, visible way to help the environment. Our Hungry Bins game is a great way to get started. After matching up tokens showing banana peels, yogurt cups, and other trash, players feed them into cute cartoon bins. It’s a fun way to learn what can be recycled. Then, they can use their new sorting skills in real life! Before you throw something out, ask your child to guess where it should go.   

3. Try composting

Start a compost pile in your yard or get an indoor worm composter. Your child will be fascinated to learn that paper and food scraps turn into soil. It’s also great for teaching kitchen cleanup, as they’ll be excited to scrape their plate into the compost after meals.

4. Conserve energy

Little kids are delighted when they can finally reach the switch to turn lights on and off. So, this is a great time to talk about saving energy! Of course, they can’t understand all the details of carbon pollution yet, so keep it simple. Explain that we need power to run a light or charge a tablet, but making power can turn the air dirty and hot. Then, each time your child turns something off, cheer and point out that they’re making the air cleaner. This will help them understand that their own small actions can protect the planet.

5. Save water

You try hard to teach your child good bathing and brushing routines to keep them healthy. While you’re at it, show them a good way to keep the planet healthy too! By turning off the faucet while brushing teeth or soaping up in the shower, they will save gallons of water each day. This will add up to hundreds of thousands of gallons saved throughout their life! 

Adventerra also has some fun learning games to help children understand the importance of this precious resource: 

• In Saving Water, a puzzle game for ages 2+, adorable sea creatures show ways that kids can save water and protect the planet in everyday life.

• In WaterGame, a board game for ages 7+, players draw cards to learn about saving and wasting water. But there’s a catch: if the community water tank is empty when someone needs it, everyone will lose. Players learn to cooperate so no one runs dry.

Just think: a preschooler who recycles their applesauce jars may become a teen who volunteers for stream cleanups, or an adult who invents new products made from recycled materials. Empowering one small child can lead to very big changes for our world!

Adventerra combines the words “adventure” and “terra,” the Latin name for earth. It reflects our mission: to create exciting games that help kids protect the planet! Check out our other educational eco games, and follow this blog for more parenting tips!