April is now considered Earth Month, an extension of Earth Day which is on April 22.
It is time for us humans to appreciate mother Earth, learn about what we personally and collectively are doing to pollute her and what we can do to preserve her for the long haul. It’s also a great opportunity to teach children about the 3 Rs of Earth day: Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle.
Families create so much waste weekly, but there are simple things that can be done to reduce our collective carbon footprint if we learn about them. One easy way is to recycle.
And just in time for Earth Month, to help you get you children to understand the concept comes this month’s “WordGirl News” report from the popular Emmy® Award-winning cartoon show WordGirl, produced by Scholastic Media.
It’s all about the word “RECYCLE”!
Tune in this April 22 to the special Earth Day episode of the show which follows the everyday life and superhero adventures of WordGirl. She is mild-mannered 5th-grader Becky Botsford by day, but who also fights crime and enriches vocabulary usage with her monkey sidekick, Captain Huggy Face, with her extraordinary strength and added benefit of a colossal vocabulary. Each episode introduces four new vocabulary words and reinforces their meanings in a variety of contexts.
And Here are 5 Things you can do this Earth Day to help your entire family leave a smaller carbon footprint.
1. Calculate your Carbon Footprint using this online FREE tool, then do something to lower it, whatever that calculation amounts to.
2. Download one of these 10 apps to help you live a greener life.
3. Start recycling in your home. Review these easy simple rules for starting.
4. Build a compost and have the kids help you make it. Follow this guide.
5. Commit to buying eco-friendly products when you can.
6. About a quarter of diseases are exposed by environmental exposure, the World Health Organization states. Educate yourself about pollutants, including man-made substances that can not only pollute the Earth but kill, such as asbestos. Cancer survivor Heather Von St. James beat the 2 year to death prognosis given to the 3,000 people who contract mesothelioma annually from asbestos exposure and set up a webpage to raise awareness about it HERE.
7. Purchase reusable products like plastic lunch boxes to reduce the number of sandwich bags you use weekly, reusable water bottles to replace of crates of 8 ounce bottles, and mesh grocery bags to limit the amount of plastic bags you accumulate from weekly grocery shopping.
Start here and we’ll all make the world a better place.