Keeping Our Parks Beautiful
Summer is here and it is time to play! How about mix service with play as you visit your local parks. We get to enjoy the parks in our community and it is important that we keep our local parks looking beautiful and clean.
Talk to your child ahead of time about how we can do our part. Talk about the importance of keeping our world clean and beautiful. Tell them how we always place our garbage in a bin or can. Talk to them about what would happen if no one put their garbage where they should (you could use the movie Wall-E as an example) and if everyone left it lying around. It would be dirty and stinky and there would be garbage all over the place, making it hard to have fun running, sliding, swinging and playing. But, it also affects the air we breathe, the water we drink, the plants and animals.
We are all affected by how clean the world is. If your child is older you could take this even further by showing environmental clips on YouTube and discussing the recent oil spill tragedy. Then talk about how beautiful and clean it would be if everyone would do their part and put garbage where it belongs.
Get them their own special gloves and pail and explain that we are going to clean up the park to show how thankful we are to be able to go and play there.
I have organized a Summer Play Date Group with the moms I know and have picked one day a week that is our Park Day. We are going to go to a new park each time which is fun for the kids and it is a great time to relax and visit with other moms as well.
Print up a schedule and explain to them that as soon as we get to the park we are going to sing the ‘clean up’ song and have each child see if they can find 3 pieces of garbage each. Make it fun, like a treasure hunt!
Keep it consistent each time beginning the same way so the kids will begin to expect it. Thank them for their efforts when they do offer their assistance, no matter how small. Tell them how they have made this park a more beautiful place and we have said “thank you” by cleaning up and doing our part.
Originally posted on June 30, 2010