For projects related to Gardening with Children, you may want to also consider: Bird Feeders, Climate Zones, Container Gardening, Creating Theme Gardens, Garden Designing, Garden Enhancements, Garden Sculptures, Indoor Planting, and Planting Seeds. Kids can learn a lot about nature just by helping out around the yard or in the garden. Many garden centers sell kid sized gloves and tools. Children as young as two or three years old can help with basic chores like watering planting beds, as long as they have enough ‘range’ to miss the exact location of the plant base and just soak the planting bed. If there are any windows open or a spouse lounging in the sun, just…take care of the potential ‘hazards’ to save yourself from making apologies. When it comes to more significant garden support like summer weeding or clearing sticks and leaves in the fall, consider offering a reward even if it is as low as a treat or a quarter that can feed the piggy banks for kids under 5 year olds. The carbon output for leaf blowers is so high that a few hours with a rake may save the environment, give you some exercise and give your child a fun new experience. Mini-rakes are key to add to your arsenal of kid-sized tools for this project. Over the spring and summer, creating a pattern of weekly watering is a great early way to develop a child’s responsibility and let them see the growth patterns of plants. Regardless of the task, make sure to have the children participate in the clean-up process, even if it is as simple as coiling up the hose, so that they understand the complete cycle of garden responsibility. Planting seeds is a particularly rewarding experience for children whether the seeds are indoors or outdoors. After several days and possible weeks of watering an area of the lawn that has been seeded, there is often a ‘breakthrough’ morning when you wake up and look out on a sea of thousands of tiny little blade sprouts that have broken through. From the low vantage point of a child’s perspective this ‘wow’ moment is great because the new grass appears as a thin green blanket. You may also find that a routine trip to the home or garden center is a great opportunity to turn your chore into a fun ‘field trip’ and let your kids go along to see the often incredibly diverse range of annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs, evergreens, and deciduous trees. Overall, the strategy of ‘Live it. Learn it’ applies here directly. You may find that the first hand experience of getting their hands a little dirty goes a long way to growing plants and character.
The right home improvement products, techniques, and services:
Contractors, home improvement stores, and specialty shops in your area may not yet have a complete familiarity with the ‘green’ opportunities, products, system integration, and overall savings potential. So, you may get some resistance, since people in general are typically more comfortable recommending something that they are already familiar with rather than something new. To help break the inertia, use the information across this website like our Return on Investment Master ROI Table. Also feel free to post a question in our forum on the message board about a particular need for your home relative to your area. Our team has spent multiple years aggregating research from public and private sector performance reports and from manufacturers and homeowners across the country in order to provide you with the perspective you may need to see the initial payback and long term advantages. Environmental enthusiasts and leading institutions like the American Institute of Architects and the National Association of Realtors, see the value and link into our resources to support their members.
The Green Home:
For your overall home improvement, you can save money, improve your family’s health, and save the planet. Find out for free how much it will cost to do different types of home improvement in your home from a qualified and member approved contractor in your area. Get a FREE Quote . Plus, regardless of the size and scope of your home improvement project, save money and keep your home clean with the top rated chemical free and concentrated Green Home Cleaning Products.
Home Improvement Basics:
When it comes to home improvement basics, look for interior home improvements like creating a clean, safe, and healthy home through sustainable ‘green’ furniture, home décor, zero VOC and Interior Paint, plus ENERGY STAR Appliances and Electronics. For energy and utility savings you can focus on insulation and air sealing, windows, doors, lighting and skylights, water saving plumbing opportunities, and high efficiency heating and air conditioning systems. On the outside of your house, look for exterior home improvement opportunities through landscape design and gardening plus solar energy, wind and other power sources. If you are undertaking a major home renovation, an additions, or building a new home, then take the lead to ‘go green’ in as many ways as possible to save money and the environment.
