I was happy to receive 5 CDs from Stan Slaughter, the Eco-Troubadour. For the last few weeks I have been popping his various CDs in the player, and watching how my kids react (usually wild and uncontained hopping, wiggling and a sideways skip sort of a move that is my 3 year old’s signature move). Let me back up.
Stan Slaughter has been making music about the environment for over 25 years. He’s taken every environmental topic, from composting, hazardous waste, recycling, solid waste and aquatic ecosystems, and turned them into countless songs to teach and inspire. Stan has traveled the country performing his environmental music to over 500,000 students and adults.
Stan’s music is no shrinking violet. He rocks out in many of the tunes, with serious guitar licks, so if you are looking for something light, all acoustic or bluegrass, this may not be it. But anyone who can turn the concept of an aquifer into a song has my respect.
BBC Scotland is leveraging kids’ pension for codes, clues, missions and 007-style in a fun little interactive for young kids 7-9 called The Environmental Intelligence Unit.
In classic “the world needs your help” secret agent mode, the game puts the child in ‘action-hero’ context to take on traffic, pollution and rubbish aligned with the three R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle.
It’s a pretty basic primer to seed core concepts in sustainability, but definitely age appropriate, incorporating factoids and video clips as kids become environmental agents on a mission to ‘find the missing R.’ (spoiler alert: the teacher’s page will fill you in on what that “R” is!)
There are four island missions (house, clear out, school, beach) and if kids engage in all four to obtain the right code words they can receive a final Eco Certificate. (hmnn…I know this is geared more for ‘reach and teach’ tactics, but I could think of some more creative/green awards that might be a better fit than a printout! So ping me, BBC, the idea hamster here will give you some freebie creative director ideas!)
I was inspired by Jessica’s banana. The most eco-friendly choices are so simple, aren’t they? Though a picture says a thousand words, Jamie said it best this week in her post on fun activities for young children: ”The first step in becoming more Earth Friendly is to consume less.”
This is why I love Jackie Silberg’s book 500 Five Minute Games. Quick and Easy Activities For 3-6 Year Olds. Silberg’s book is great for preschool teachers, but also for moms and dads who tire easily of young children’s games and toys. Before getting this book I often felt tempted to pick up the phone or put on a movie when my preschooler’s games got repetitive. There’s only so many times in a day you can sincerely answer yes to ”Wanna play hippos?”.
The eco-friendly aspect of Silberg’s book is simple; the activities in it require almost no stuff. Apart from a few experiments that call for simple household items like a bowl or a flashlight, the majority of games and activities in the book require only the world’s most precious resource: children. (Some games require a few kids, but I have been able to adapt most of them to 2 player by either becoming a participant or inviting a stuffed hippo or pony into the circle.) You can also scan each page in a matter of seconds and get the game going before any attention is lost. My daughter’s favourite game from Silberg’s book is called “An Interesting Story” and is from the Language Game section. It goes like this:
At left is Dizzywood’s celebration of Wildwood Glen’s reforestation, where kids planted 15,000 trees in online to offline eco-parity, partnering with The Arbor Day Foundation. I’ve added a slew of other tree-planting ideas and sites at the end of this piece to get ready for 9-22-08, worldwide Tree Planting Day coming up in the next couple weeks. In keeping with the green media theme of hope, promise and eco-renewal…here’s more from my interview with Scott Arpajian, Co-Founder of preteen virtual world, Dizzywood…
Even though I spend a lot of time championing the outdoors as the ultimate green play time, greening kids’ minds with environmental stewardship happens online daily.
I love kid-lit and fabulous tree tales like A Forest of Storiesand The Giving Tree is still my favorite book of all time…but paper free, online media like Dizzywood’s virtual world of collaborative play prove eco-literacy can transpire on a screen too…In Web 2.0 live-chat, 3-D immersive, fun!
Last week at the massive Virtual Worlds Expo in L.A., Dizzywood’s virtual critters and cuties turned some heads learning that kids’ reforestation efforts online enabled 15,000 REAL trees to be planted off line,thanks to their eco-partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation! Created for preteens 8-12 and Privo Safety Seal tested with accolades out the wazoo, Dizzywood is thankfully, NOT an anomaly…Check out these OTHER eco-positive picks that prove green media is not an oxymoron!
Showing infinite wisdom beyond Americans, the French have banned French television programs designed for children under three-years-old. Unfortunately, young French children are still exposed to TV programs broadcast from foreign channels on cable, such BabyFirstTV, but now those channels must warn parents of the negative developmental effects of television watching. Such programing now issues the following warning to French parents,
“Watching television can slow the development of children under 3, even when it involves channels aimed specifically at them.”
The warning is based on a ruling by the High Audiovisual Council which states:
Television viewing hurts the development of children under 3 years old and poses a certain number of risks, encouraging passivity, slow language acquisition, over-excitedness, troubles with sleep and concentration as well as dependence on screens.
Last week the editors at Green Options asked me if I wanted to write a review of Woogi World. “Uh, okay, I haven’t written a hatchet piece an ages.” was my unenthusiastic reply.
Here’s the deal in my house. My kids get 30 minutes of media; it can be a TV show or some computer time. I’ll give them longer for a movie when we watch together or an hour or more when they’re playing with pictures or Garage Band, but really, leaving my kids parked in front of the computer on a glorious summer day is not my idea of time well spent.
With all that being said, this review may surprise you.
I’ve always dreamed of being a surfer. I’ve tried to ride the waves, but I don’t like saltwater in my eyes. I’ve even tried dating a surfer. When I heard of the movie Surfwise about the infamous Poskowitz family, I was excited to watch it and thought it might be fun to view with my daughter, until I noticed the R-rating. I wanted her perspective on what it would be like to not go to school and live in a camper, but there’s a lot of talk about sex in the movie.
Surfwise is the story of legendary surfer Dr. Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children. Doc is a Stanford educated doctor who left his successful medical practice to chase the waves, towing along his 9 children (8 boys, 1 girl) in a 24 foot camper. The children slept like “puppies”, were raised on a strict natural diet of seven grain cereal, and surfed almost every day. As one of the children described, their life was like being on vacation all the time. Most children’s parents felt it was dangerous to swim with sharks and safer to go to school, but Doc felt the opposite about education. He felt that school was dangerous, and the sharks safe.
It all sounds rather idyllic, other than the crowded camper; however, Doc is a dictator jerk. He insisted on having sex every night in the camper with his children present, he beat his son for not surfing, and he demanded his wife breastfeed each child until they were two years old. I agree with long term breastfeeding, but instead of supporting his wife’s decision, Doc insisted this was how his children would be raised if that was how primates did it. There are some redeeming qualities about Doc, such as going to towns that hadn’t had a doctor in years for a job when money was needed and starting a surf school, but he left his children unprepared for the world and resentful of his domination.
In case you didn’t see it, Eco Child’s Play was featured in this weekend’s New York Times. In a piece called “Blogging Against Barbie“, Dan Mitchell wrote:
When greenwashing is aimed at adults, environmentalists generally find it annoying and sometimes — if it is sufficiently transparent — amusing. But when children are the targets, the environmentalists find it infuriating. So when Mattel recently issued a news release promoting
I was happy to receive 5 CDs from Stan Slaughter, the Eco-Troubadour. For the last few weeks I have been popping his various CDs in the player, and watching how my kids react (usually wild and uncontained hopping, wiggling and a sideways skip sort of a move that is my 3 year old’s signature move). Let me back up. 
