From Guest Blogger Heather Legg: Nursery Schools Can Become More Green

It’s never too early to start teaching environmental awareness, and while preschools and nursery schools are teaching it, they can go green at the same time.

Parents invest far beyond the tuition costs by sending their children to preschool and nursery school – they want them to be safe and healthy.

Here are some things schools can do to be green and some things the kids and families can do as well.

Schools

It’s sort of amazing the amount of chemicals we can come into contact with every day. When kids are at nursery school, it’s best to minimize any contact with dangerous chemicals. Unfortunately, they are everywhere, but here are some ways to go a bit greener …

• Use environmentally safe, non-toxic cleaning supplies. Places with small children are breeding grounds for germs, so they do need to be cleaned. Purchase eco friendly cleaners to avoid any harmful ingredients.
• Use eco friendly pest control. No one wants to walk into a classroom and see cockroaches or hear mice in the walls; sometimes pest control is necessary. Use an eco friendly company to handle this for you to prevent dangerous chemicals and insecticides from coming into contact with the children.
• Check art materials. Make sure to skip the products with harmful ingredients or hazardous fumes. Supply your school with safe, non-toxic supplies.

To teach the kids and families

It’s not too early to teach kids about being friendly to the environment. It’s just like instilling a love of reading – if it starts at an early age, it will become a part of life. Here are some things you can encourage the kids and their families to do (you can decide how strictly to enforce these):

• Waste free lunches. Have the kids bring lunches as waste free as possible. That means skipping individually packaged snacks and using reusable containers. Encourage lunch boxes instead of disposable bags. Cloth napkins, reusable forks/spoons and reusable cups or water bottles are great additions to a waste free lunch box.
• Encourage hand washing with soap and water instead of relying on hand sanitizer, or skip the hand sanitizer altogether. Hand washing is much more effective and a great habit to start.
• Have local farmers come in and share their foods at snack time.
• Grow and maintain a vegetable/fruit garden, and when the food is ready, eat together.
• Have accessible recycling bins and teach the kids what goes where. Is it recyclable, reusable, compostable … ? You can use the products from the reusable bin for art projects. This is a great way to spur creativity. The compost can go in your garden.
• Create no idling zones for drop off and pick up. Cars emit lots of unhealthy fumes while idling that can affect little lungs. Teach parents the importance of no idling and let them know your policies don’t allow idling.

It’s not surprising that more and more schools are joining green coalitions to learn about eco-friendly forms of education that they can instill in their students.

Kids are excited about doing the right thing, and they can take what they learn and keep it forever, far beyond the years of nursery school.

About the Author: Heather Legg is a writer who covers topics related to living in an eco-friendly manner, social media and car seat boosters.