T.E.A.C.H. Green: My Earth-Friendly Tips

As a supporter of “green living”, I mentioned in my previous post some “acts of green” that we do at home.  And everyday I get a daily dose of green living tips from one of my sidebar widgets, which I find really helpful as a friendly reminder and as a good information dissemination tool.  Conservation, recycling and re-planting are just some of the common earth-friendly tips that we hear or read about.  But to put together all that I want to share to you today, there are 5 major earth-friendly tips that my mind can think of right now as I write this blog post, and I found an acronym to best describe them, that is T.E.A.C.H. Green!  Here goes:

1.  Teach –  As parents, I believe it is our social responsibility to help our children understand about the one world they live in, and teach them how to be more environmentally aware and socially responsible for their actions towards their environment.  As a homeschooling mom to my 2 preschoolers, I try to incorporate this in our homeschool subjects, like in Science, Arts and in our simple Social Study lessons.  We also try to do some simple environment-friendly projects like planting a tree and growing a plant and recycling old materials and transforming them into works of art.  We also get a lot of interesting facts about our world and how to take care of it by reading the National Geographic Kids Almanac book and other related materials.

There are also some fun and interesting websites you can check out to help you teach about our planet and the environment to your little children, such as:

-  Habitat Heroes and

-  PlanetPals

Homeschooling or not, no matter what age your children may be in now, I think we can do our share of teaching our children how to be socially responsible and environmentally aware by educating them with books, hands-on projects, websites, and other reference materials, and by exposing them, which leads to my second tip…

2.  Expose –  What could be a better way for the children to understand what we want to teach them about taking care of Mother Earth but to expose them to the real world itself.  Intentional or unintentional trips to see nature’s beauty and wonders as well as man’s carelessness and blunders would be an eye-opener to them.  Even exposure trips to some discovery center or parks and wildlife or even in places like Payatas and Pasig River will help them see and understand better the cause and effect of man’s action towards nature – that if only we take good care of Mother Nature, these children of ours and our children’s children will continue to see the beauty that God has created, but if people continue to become irresponsible and careless, this beauty is bound for destruction.

3.  Apply –  What are all tips for if we are not going to apply them in our life, right?  And as parents, this means modeling it to our children, and applying it in our own personal life and at home.  This includes what we eat, what we take into our body, what we use, and what we do that all have impact in the one world that we live in.  I guess this is a challenging one.

4.  Change – If application is challenging enough, I guess this is even more challenging – to change our “earth-unfriendly” habits.  But with conscious effort and with Our Maker’s help, I think nothing is impossible.  Just as an old TV commercial says, “Great things start from small beginnings.”  It’s worth giving it a try – for the benefit of the future generations.

5.  Help – Help the campaign by advocating clean and green living.  If a “greening” activity or campaign comes your way, take part.  Involve the whole family, if possible.  Spread the love for Mother Earth.

Do you recall what the second law of thermodynamics in science is?  It’s for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  It simply means whatever you do to others will later return to you, either at present or in the future.  Whatever goes around comes around.  It’s just like the principle of sowing and reaping.  Therefore, whatever we do now to our environment will have an impact in our present and future generation.  We are all accountable for everything we do not only to Mother Nature, but to the One who created it.  Let’s do our share of “T.E.A.C.H.ing Green”.

Sharing these earth-friendly tips with