Green Options

Practically Green: Your Guide to Ecofriendly Decision-Making by Micaela Preston is exactly what it says, a practical guide to going green.

This is one of the best green books I have read, probably because it isn’t all preachy and because I am a big DIY girl I just love the 30+ DIY projects included in this book.

Clementine Art offers safe and natural art supplies for kids: soy crayons, soy crayon rocks, markers, paint, modeling dough and glue. all made with safe, natural, non-toxic ingredients. Perfect for little budding green artists.

I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas: Gifts, Decorations, and Recipes that Use Less and Mean More by Anna Getty is a great book to help you get a head start on greening the winter holidays.

I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas is a fabulous book full of tips, expert advice, crafts, recipes, decorating ideas and directions and pretty much everything you need to make the holidays more eco-friendly.

Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things: How to Craft Eco-Garments and Sneaky Snack Kits, Create Green Cleaners, Remake Paper into Flying Toys, Assemble … a Robot Recycle Bin with Everyday Things is a fun and fabulous book for people that love to create their own gadgets.

This book is almost like a science project book. Both my older kids are checking it deciding which fun gadgets and experiments they want to try.

If you do homeschooling this might be a great book for you to get since it is full of green projects, experiments and even some crafty fun.

One Small Step was founded by a mom who needed alternatives for her daughter’s lunches. Renata Bodon’s daughter’s school requires waste free lunches.

That led to One Small Step, an online resource for reusable, eco-friendly, stylish, and environmentally safe lunch products and food wraps with no BPA, no phthalates, and no PVC.

In addition to eco-lunch containers, reusable sandwich wraps, and environmentally friendly lunch bags One Small Step also carries eco backpacks, EcoStaplers, and Greenciles (pencils) for your back to school needs.

This contest is now closed thank you to all that entered.

(Never had such a hard time giving away free stuff before, so far two winners have been chosen and emailed but no one emails me back with shipping address. I’ll try one more time to choose a winner. Thanks)

TerraCycle is offering a free back to school prize pack for one lucky Eco Child’s Play reader.

Would you like to win a TerraCycle Billboard Backpack, a Drink Pouch Lunch Box, a Drink Pouch Pencil Case, and a Chips Ahoy Notebook, for a retail value of around $55?

All you have to do is read through this post and leave a comment with your contact info to be entered in the contest.

There are lots of cute, environmentally kind supply options for the 2009-2010 school year. Who doesn’t love banana paper and Smencils?  Sometimes, its the basic items that are the hardest to find. Here is a set of basic back to school supplies from Sustainable Group for your child to personalize.

These supplies remind me of my high school days when I made collages on all my binders with magazine photos and funny quotes. They were the talk of class and several friends requested that I also make collages on their binders as well. How I wish these binders and replaceable covers were around then!

Sand dough is a great choice for recycling the pretty clean sandbox sand that remains in your sandbox at the end of the season, which is when we usually make it, but I can imagine that it would also make a super-fun beachside project, perhaps even your own sandcastle souvenir, complete with seashells and a moat ready to be filled with salt water.

Even for play dough aficionados, sand dough has a terrifically gritty texture that provides an entirely new sensory experience to the act of working with the dough, and it can be an excellent component to a sensory table for a special needs child or as a teaching tool for a tactile learner—use it in conjunction with the sawdust dough for two very neat and unusual experiences.

Like the sand dough and the sawdust dough, oil dough is another unique sensory experience. It’s smooth and creamy and soft, and yes, it will leave your hands and work surface oily, so be prepared.

The oil is what makes this dough truly special, however. You can use the cheapest oil available and your dough will work just fine, but for a treat you can substitute in any other oil that you’d like, taking advantage of its properties—something to soften the skin, perhaps, or something soothing especially for a child with eczema can play with, or you can substitute in some essential oils for an aromatherapy benefit (be cautious, of course, about using essential oils on children—they’re smaller than we are, and you know that a little essential oil already goes a long way).

You will need:

Unlike the sawdust dough, the sand dough, and even the oil dough, the cornstarch dough uses no flour, but instead calls for cornstarch and salt. This makes a good play dough for someone who might be sensitive to most flours, or perhaps to use up some more of that cornstarch that I keep making you buy for other art supply recipes.

Unlike the other dough recipes that I’ve shared, as well, this dough does require cooking over low heat, which actually most play dough recipes do require. It’s just something to be aware of when you have little helpers on hand.

You will need:

One thing about bubble solution is that it’s super cheap. At the beginning of the season I marched stalwartly into Target to buy tampons (I avoid Target, because although I try to avoid new purchases, I am weak in the face of a deal), and somehow ended up with gallons of bubble solution for basically pennies. A lot of which the girls managed to spill into the minivan carpet on the ride home, so it was just as well that I bought extra—bonus carpet shampoo, I suppose.

Sometimes, however, you don’t want to buy something just because it’s a deal. Perhaps you have an empty container of bubble solution and just need some product, not the packaging, or perhaps you and your child like to experiment with recipes, or perhaps you’re just of the DIY mindset and would rather make something yourself rather than purchase it—admirable goals, all.