New Ideas for Celebrating Easter at Your House

Easter is a good time for children. Decorating eggs, looking for Easter baskets, Easter egg hunts, picnics, bunnies, and baby chicks all contribute to great childhood memories. Beyond the obvious religious significance, bounty, promise, and renewal are the things I think of most when I remember Easter.

Easter and the Environment

I believe Easter offers the most eco-centric opportunity of all the major holidays, and embracing that aspect of Easter at your house can give you a great start on teaching your children the value of recycling, respecting the earth, and honoring the changing seasons. Here's how:

Getting a Start on Spring – Starting a Garden From Seed

Children are naturals in the garden. This spring why not start an herb or vegetable garden with children in mind. Vegetables like lettuce, radishes, and snow peas germinate quickly and put on an impressive early show. You can start seeds between two sheets of damp paper towel placed on a tray or plastic wrapped cookie sheet. Keep the tray in a sunny spot, uniformly moist, until roots appear. (Have your children spritz them once or twice daily with a spray bottle.)

Once the seeds germinate, move them to peat pots, or better, pots that you've made from newsprint and filled with potting mix (Go here for a quick video on making your own paper starter pots). Move them to your garden or an outdoor pot once all threat of frost has passed and overnight temperatures have warmed into the 50s or higher. The back of the seed packet will give you good information on when and how to plant your vegetables outdoors. Watching seeds sprout roots and leaves is an eye opener for children and can engender a lifelong love of plants.

One sure winner is to introduce a few herbs into your garden project. Peppermint, lemon thyme, lavender, and chocolate geraniums are a delight to children who are fascinated by the strong fragrances that they can relate to things they're already familiar with. Once they have an interest in their plant collection, they will be much more aware of weather, the seasons, soil, and nature in general. Give them a gift this Easter by broadening their interests.

Beginning a Recycling Plan for Glass, Aluminum, Plastic and Paper

Recycling isn't new, but committed recycling isn't the norm. Help your children learn lessons that will inspire a generation to respect the earth and reduce landfills across the country.

If you don't recycle aluminum, glass, and paper, start a household program that will make recycling easier. Set up a recycling station in your kitchen. This may be as simple as a basket next to the garbage. Instead of tossing packaging, show your children how to check for the recycling symbol, and be diligent about reinforcing the suggestion that they always check before they toss. If you regularly us an item with packaging that can't be recycled, consider contacting the manufacturer and suggesting more eco-friendly manufacturing practices.

Reusing and Conserving

The habit of reusing and conserving can be hard to learn, but is easy to maintain once it's a part of your routine. Instead of buying paper for wrapping gifts, use fabric. Cut lengths of fabric with pinking shears and reuse these fabric wraps for family gifts. The familiar fabric will become a family tradition and you will be teaching a valuable lesson about personalizing your eco-friendly habits.

Remind your children to turn out lights when they leave a room. If they are careless with running water from the tap, put flow restrictors on the faucets, particularly on the sink(s) where they brush their teeth. With each measure that you add to their routine, explain why conservation is important.

Take cotton bags to the grocery store instead of using disposable bags. Packages of plain cotton bags aren't expensive and will help curb the environmental disaster of plastic bags in landfill. Enlist your children to carry the empty bags to the store. To make it more fun, have them personalize the bags with their handprints, names, and artwork.

You can show your children how to look at their possessions in a new way if you start recycling some of their clothing. Make small projects out of their castoffs. Although these items may be useful discards, making other objects, like small quilts, wall hangings, placemats, coasters, or potholders out of some of them will make a forceful impression. It may get them to start looking at their belongings and "stuff" in a new way. It will also help build memories (maybe even create some family heirlooms). There are hundreds of no-sew projects that will get you on the road to making memories and teaching valuable lessons. Check no-sew projects at Suite 101 for more information.

Recognizing Nature is the First Step to Respecting Nature

These are just a few suggestions. The more you reinforce the fact that there are things you can do every day to help the environment, the more likely it is that some of the lessons will stick.

One of the most powerful steps for good that you can take is in getting your children to respect nature. Bird watching, keeping pets (an aquarium is a great teacher), camping, and nature walks are all activities that place a focus on the importance of nature in life, and the emerging role of caretaker that new generations must assume if our planet is to thrive.

Easter is a celebration of nature. Make sure that you take advantage of the opportunity that Easter provides to teach your children to have the respect for nature that will help us all in the years to come. This year when you bury eggs in the yard, tell you kids that they'll be planting a vegetable patch or herb garden this year. When you serve Easter dinner, have your recycle station set up and show your children how to recognize, rinse, and segregate recyclables. Go through old clothes on Easter Sunday and pull out some items that will make good future-project material.

Sit down with your family this holiday and show them how they can help protect the Earth, on Easter and every day after that.