With Earth Day upon us, we realize importance of preserving our planet. Today, or even this week, is a great time to teach your distance learner about the impact of reducing, reusing, and recycling. Here are three ways to engage your student in protecting our environment.
1. Reduce, reuse, and recycle in your home. The easiest way to make an impact is to start in your own home. If you haven't already done so, set up recycling bins in your home and teach your student to identify and properly categorize recyclable items. Cut up old shirts into rags and reuse the buttons or other embellishments for craft projects instead of throwing them out. Even simple changes, like turning off lights when leaving a room or investing in reusable water bottles and lunch bags instead of plastic, can reduce waste.
2. Field trips. Take your distance learner to your local dump or landfill. Seeing where all of those bottles and cans we throw in the recycling bin end up will help your student better understand the impact of our consumption. Also consider visiting the local wastewater treatment plant, where your student can discover what happens to the water we discard after it trickles down the drain.
3. Community cleanup. Check the weather forecast, grab some rubber gloves, and choose a nice day to head outside and remove any winter waste you can find in local parks and neighborhoods. Sort and recycle the items you find to make the service project a learning experience, too.