Green Parent Chicago

Feeding the Hungry – A Homemade Video On How You and Your Children Can Make A Difference For A Food Bank!

According to AmpleHarvest.org, "an estimated 100 billion pounds of food, enough to totally eliminate hunger, is thrown away annually in the United States.” Be shocked – and then make a difference for your community by stopping the waste.

Regularly clean out your food pantry - – if you are not eating the food in your home, donate it to a local food pantry before it gets outdated. If you grow a garden and have leftover vegetables, do not leave it standing on the plants; take it to a local food pantry and donate it to someone who could really use it like we  did in the above video. Organizations like AmpleHarvest.org enable neighbors in need to obtain garden fresh produce that might be left standing unharvested due to over production in home and community gardens. Please send food pantry’s that are unregistered to this website to help make a difference for people in your community.

Above is a homemade video my daughter and I made about collecting vegetables from the garden and taking it to be donated. Having my eight-year-old help plant and grow the plants, then film our trip, gave her a strong sense of ownership with the experience. Notice how excited and proud she is that she is bringing “her baby” the pumpkin to give to some other child.

All of our children should understand and identify with the feeling of caring for others, most especially those in need right in our very own neighborhoods. Building our community means building our economy and contributing to the emotional health of other human beings. Of all lessons in life, I believe this one should take priority for our children.

Grow a garden if you can because it can make a real difference for the world. Teach your family and neighbors how to grow a garden as well. Get started planning right NOW – at the end of this gardening season – to plan for next year’s vegetable garden. Purposely plant vegetables which are easy to grow and which might be mass producers so you can contribute more to help those who really need it. If you cannot grow a garden on your property, invite your neighbors to participate or build a community garden on a local community property.

What will you do to have your children understand the importance of helping the hungry?

-Shawna Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

Kids and Recycling – Expand Their Brains When They Say, “I’m Bored!”

Fall rainy days and children combine to produce the inevitable complaint, “I’m bored.” Not too long ago my youngest daughter and I came up with a genius solution to the “I’m bored’s” which was fun and educational. Here’s how it went:

“Mom, I’m bored.”

“You can’t be bored. You’re nine years old – go play.”

“I’m still bored.”

“Do the dishes! That’ll keep you busy.”

“That’s not the type of bored I am.”

“Hmm…” As I glance around the kitchen, my eyes fell on the recycling bin. “Hey! Look at that – you have an entire recycling bin full of craft supplies.”

“I do?”

“Yep. You do.”

Two hours later my daughter put the finishing touches on the above creative crafts. One milk jug car and another aluminum can sports car, plus several other fun things. All ended up back in the recycling bin after dinner, but the products provided two hours of active, brain-building play. She had to figure out how the tires would fit on to balance the vehicle, why we all have license plates on our cars, and aluminum is very thin so it can also be sharp and dangerous. She learned just a little bit more about life.

We currently live in a country where 4.5 million children are diagnosed with ADD, millions of children suffer from depression, and childhood educational programs are being cut due to funding problems at our public schools. Enabling active play where children learn to build and create at home is an important part of brain development. Schools are just the beginning of a child’s education; we as parents, friends, and family of children should be actively working together to help our children learn and be healthy.

Make a difference in the life of a child – suggest creative and green ways to solve the “I’m bored’s” and your child will begin to see the world in a whole new way.

--Shawna Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

Fall rainy days and children combine to produce the inevitable complaint, “I’m bored.” Not too long ago my youngest daughter and I came up with a genius solution to the “I’m bored’s” which was fun and educational. Here’s how it went:

“Mom, I’m bored.”

“You can’t be bored. You’re nine years old – go play.”

“I’m still bored.”

“Do the dishes! That’ll keep you busy.”

“That’s not the type of bored I am.”

“Hmm…” As I glance around the kitchen, my eyes fell on the recycling bin. “Hey! Look at that – you have an entire recycling bin full of craft supplies.”

“I do?”

“Yep. You do.”

Two hours later my daughter put the finishing touches on the above creative crafts. One milk jug car and another aluminum can sports car, plus several other fun things. All ended up back in the recycling bin after dinner, but the products provided two hours of active, brain-building play. She had to figure out how the tires would fit on to balance the vehicle, why we all have license plates on our cars, and aluminum is very thin so it can also be sharp and dangerous. She learned just a little bit more about life.

We currently live in a country where 4.5 million children are diagnosed with ADD, millions of children suffer from depression, and childhood educational programs are being cut due to funding problems at our public schools. Enabling active play where children learn to build and create at home is an important part of brain development. Schools are just the beginning of a child’s education; we as parents, friends, and family of children should be actively working together to help our children learn and be healthy.

Make a difference in the life of a child – suggest creative and green ways to solve the “I’m bored’s” and your child will begin to see the world in a whole new way.

--Shawna Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

“Mom, what does a cricket eat?” Is Your Child Suffering From Nature Deficit Disorder?

Is your child touching nature regularly? It might just be detrimental to their health if they are not able to experience the greater natural world.

When my daughter asked me “Mom, what does a cricket eat?” I immediately jumped online and found out. Why? Because I want her to understand more about the connection between nature and her body. Turns out crickets are omnivores. That means they eat everything – including each other.

She kept the little buggers in a jar overnight and learned that although they do like vegetable material, a tomato needs to be more fully rotted for them to really eat it. Therefore, she let the crickets free in the morning and learned a science lesson about nature.

Richard Louv, the author of Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2008) originally coined the phrase, “Nature Deficit Disorder.” His strong belief is that children who have not been exposed to nature can suffer all sorts of medical malady’s, both physical and mental. My daughter spends a significant amount of time outside and it has truly educated her on more than just play – she’s learning how nature really works.

Next on my daughter's scientific learning journey with crickets, she wants to capture them and try feeding them varying foods like bugs, and see which they prefer.

Please give us suggestions on other experiments we can try to help my daughter learn more about nature and I will share them with my readers!

-Shawna Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

Is your child touching nature regularly? It might just be detrimental to their health if they are not able to experience the greater natural world.

When my daughter asked me “Mom, what does a cricket eat?” I immediately jumped online and found out. Why? Because I want her to understand more about the connection between nature and her body. Turns out crickets are omnivores. That means they eat everything – including each other.

She kept the little buggers in a jar overnight and learned that although they do like vegetable material, a tomato needs to be more fully rotted for them to really eat it. Therefore, she let the crickets free in the morning and learned a science lesson about nature.

Richard Louv, the author of Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2008) originally coined the phrase, “Nature Deficit Disorder.” His strong belief is that children who have not been exposed to nature can suffer all sorts of medical malady’s, both physical and mental. My daughter spends a significant amount of time outside and it has truly educated her on more than just play – she’s learning how nature really works.

Next on my daughter's scientific learning journey with crickets, she wants to capture them and try feeding them varying foods like bugs, and see which they prefer.

Please give us suggestions on other experiments we can try to help my daughter learn more about nature and I will share them with my readers!

-Shawna Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

Get Your Children Out In Nature – Study Cabbage Caterpillars In The Garden

We discovered cabbage worms in our broccoli. Ick. Gross. Blech. Nasty. Then my eight year old and I discovered that the Cabbage Worm Butterfly (known as the “Cabbage White”) is what the Cabbage Worm Caterpillar develops into. What a fantastic way to get your children out in the garden to learn about nature! You can see our discovery in the video above. 

In hopes of seeing the butterflies in our own front yard, we are now rescuing wayward cabbage worms and placing them on all our broccoli. The idea is to save the cabbage, kale, cauliflower, but to use the brocooli as a breeding ground for the little green caterpillars.

We are already finding chrysalis’s around the garden filled with the sleeping babies and cannot wait to see the butterflies emerge.

Get your children out in nature – it is a very green and healthy thing to do and they will love the time you spend together learning. Happily, the front yard veggie garden has turned into a wonderful experiment for our family.

-Shawna Lee Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

Food Waste Is A Serious Problem – Do Something About It At Home

This is what I saw several weeks ago when I went to clean up breakfast. Wasted food. I am sure you are wondering why six or seven bites of bread crumbs really makes a difference, right? It makes a difference when you understand that a few bites of bread is just the beginning of a giant problem we have here in the United States: food waste!

According to Food Production Daily (FPD), Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology and an expert on food loss, says that American households waste nearly 14 percent of their food purchases.

FPD goes on to say, “Fifteen per cent of that [waste] includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Jones estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.”

Amazingly, FPD says, “household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion.” Imagine how eliminating as much food waste as you can might help our environmental problems. “Jones estimates that reducing food waste by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25 percent through reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.”

With our economy in the dumps, it makes more sense than ever to SAVE MONEY as well as save food waste. It makes more sense than ever that parents must take on the firm responsibility to educate children about how to live more conservatively. They will learn good habits and maybe when they grow up they will be able to support themselves through difficult times because they have this knowledge.

My eight year old and I had a little talk about her bread crust plate and she agreed to only take what she can eat on to her plate and promised not to waste food in the future. Is it perfect? No. I waste, she wastes, we all are relearning that there is a better way to live which saves money and the earth. At least we are trying one small step at a time.

Help your children understand food waste and sustainability – a lesson learned at home with family will last a lifetime!

-Shawna Lee Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

This is what I saw several weeks ago when I went to clean up breakfast. Wasted food. I am sure you are wondering why six or seven bites of bread crumbs really makes a difference, right? It makes a difference when you understand that a few bites of bread is just the beginning of a giant problem we have here in the United States: food waste!

According to Food Production Daily (FPD), Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology and an expert on food loss, says that American households waste nearly 14 percent of their food purchases.

FPD goes on to say, “Fifteen per cent of that [waste] includes products still within their expiration date but never opened. Jones estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain products.”

Amazingly, FPD says, “household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion.” Imagine how eliminating as much food waste as you can might help our environmental problems. “Jones estimates that reducing food waste by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25 percent through reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.”

With our economy in the dumps, it makes more sense than ever to SAVE MONEY as well as save food waste. It makes more sense than ever that parents must take on the firm responsibility to educate children about how to live more conservatively. They will learn good habits and maybe when they grow up they will be able to support themselves through difficult times because they have this knowledge.

My eight year old and I had a little talk about her bread crust plate and she agreed to only take what she can eat on to her plate and promised not to waste food in the future. Is it perfect? No. I waste, she wastes, we all are relearning that there is a better way to live which saves money and the earth. At least we are trying one small step at a time.

Help your children understand food waste and sustainability – a lesson learned at home with family will last a lifetime!

-Shawna Lee Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

Learning To Be Green in High School

One of the most important life lessons we can ever teach our children is how to give back to the world. That is what Gloria Latta and her team of environmental

educators at Wheaton Warrenville South High School is doing in Wheaton, Illinois – sharing the future with kids.

Gloria’s kids worked together this year to learn about greening and sustainability in her Environmental Sciences class. From understanding the importance of prairie grasses, to studying the basics of “reduce, reuse, & recycle”, to studying alternate ways to utilize power – all of these things helped these ordinary kids learn a bit more about how our world works.When I recently came to meet the class and see their model green home projects, I was amazed at what they have grasped and retained related to the physical science of sustainability. Their model homes had great features that included self-generating power sources such as solar, wind, and geo-thermal power; water conservation techniques such as rain barrels, permeable paving driveways, native plantings; and chemical fume reduction ideas such as special non-fume paint, low-fume floor-boarding, and carpet made from recycled water bottles. These concepts are a great basic introduction and begs the point that all of us should be looking into how we can better educate our children on the basics of environmental learning. After all, we learn about cleanliness, behavior, and society from our parents – we should also learn about how to take care of the earth from our parents too.

Kudos to Gloria Latta and the WWSHS science team for working to do the right thing for our kids! I hope more high school’s across the nation take on the challenge of educating our most precious resource – our children – on environmental science.

In the photos above you can see a few of the environmental science teams with their awesome “green” houses. I am proud to say one the houses above was made by my daughters team. Can you guess which one is my daughter?

-Shawna Lee Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.

educators at Wheaton Warrenville South High School is doing in Wheaton, Illinois – sharing the future with kids.

Gloria’s kids worked together this year to learn about greening and sustainability in her Environmental Sciences class. From understanding the importance of prairie grasses, to studying the basics of “reduce, reuse, & recycle”, to studying alternate ways to utilize power – all of these things helped these ordinary kids learn a bit more about how our world works.When I recently came to meet the class and see their model green home projects, I was amazed at what they have grasped and retained related to the physical science of sustainability. Their model homes had great features that included self-generating power sources such as solar, wind, and geo-thermal power; water conservation techniques such as rain barrels, permeable paving driveways, native plantings; and chemical fume reduction ideas such as special non-fume paint, low-fume floor-boarding, and carpet made from recycled water bottles. These concepts are a great basic introduction and begs the point that all of us should be looking into how we can better educate our children on the basics of environmental learning. After all, we learn about cleanliness, behavior, and society from our parents – we should also learn about how to take care of the earth from our parents too.

Kudos to Gloria Latta and the WWSHS science team for working to do the right thing for our kids! I hope more high school’s across the nation take on the challenge of educating our most precious resource – our children – on environmental science.

In the photos above you can see a few of the environmental science teams with their awesome “green” houses. I am proud to say one the houses above was made by my daughters team. Can you guess which one is my daughter?

-Shawna Lee Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, health, and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. She blogs on conservation, greening and health tips at www.gardeningnude.com. Information on her books and other media can be found at www.thecasualgardener.com.