How can we bring children closer to environmental protection and get them excited about our natural world? First of all, it's great that you're doing this. Environmental awareness of your child. After all, we are all role models and must ensure that future generations can also grow up on a healthy planet! To increase children's environmental knowledge and sensitize them to sustainability, a healthy mix of love, knowledge and experiences is needed.
In this article, I would like to give you the best tips and ideas to make it easier for children to learn about sustainability and environmental protection. Have fun!
- Simply explain
- Read books
- Identify birds
- Build bee hotel
- Join painting contests
- Growing vegetables
- Nature trails hiking
- Explain sayings
- Determine plants
- Collect plastic waste
- Visit mercy farm
- Wooden table upcycle
- Watch Videos & Movies
- Running a household
- Answer quiz questions
Notice: Of course, there are thousands of ways to increase your child's environmental awareness. Here I would like to give you a small overview of easy-to-implement tips and ideas. If you can think of any others, please write me a comment with your suggestions.
Environmental protection for children - 15 effective tips & ideas
Raising children's awareness of environmental protection may sound like a mammoth task at first. But don't worry: it's not that complicated. And it doesn't happen overnight either, but steadily. It is a development process.
With the following tips and ideas, you can lay the foundations for your child's development into an environmentally conscious person.
1. explain the concept of environmental protection to children
As the concept of environmental protection is not really tangible, you should start by explaining it to your child. This makes it much easier to promote environmental awareness.
Environmental protection basically means that we repair existing damage to our planet and do as little damage as possible to the environment in the future. To get a more practical reference, my suggestion: first the respective Explain the environmental problem - and then the Explain the connection with our everyday life. In other words, moving from knowledge to action. Under Environmental problems of our time you will find an overview with the respective solutions.
Make yourself and your child aware that "environmental protection for children" not only means teaching children about the concept of environmental protection, but also about securing their own livelihood for the future.
2. reading books together
To promote your children's environmental awareness, you should regularly read suitable books together. Depending on their age, with a little less or a little more textual content. Either way, the feel of books and their environmental content makes learning easier.
Experience has shown that the learning effect of the following books is very high:
- „We protect our environment" by Carola von Kessel (you get here*)
- "100 things you can do for the earth" by Janine Eck (you get here*)
- "The mole Grabowski" by Luis Murschetz (you get here*)
- "Piwi and the plastic soup" from Project Blue Sea e.V. (there's here free of charge from the Federal Environment Agency)
3. identify birds in nature together
You learn a lot more about nature when you take a serious look at it. This works really well in your own garden, for example. How about taking some time to identify the birds in your own garden or another favorite place in nature?
Experience has shown that this works really well with the following books:
- "Animal and plant guide" by Anita van Saan, Holger Haag and Bärbel Oftring (you get here*)
- "Birds as guests in the garden" by Axel Gutjahr (you get here*)
Ideally, you won't have a lifeless, pure rock garden at home, but a paradise for birds. If there are hardly any birds to be heard, the article on the Bird friendly garden help further.
Tip: You can also explain to your child that you can Do not feed ducks may and how to Feeding hedgehogs correctly.
4. build bee hotel
Bees need a place to hide. A bee hotel is quick to build and easy to attach to the wall near the patio. With a few nails, some clay and wood, you and your child can make an important contribution to the fight against the species extinction perform.
A good Instructions for building a bee hotel has provided, for example, the NABU!
5. participate in painting contests
Whether it's in your local area or nationwide via the internet - drawing competitions are everywhere. They encourage creativity and help children to engage more intensively with certain topics. For example, a drawing competition can focus on environmental protection or other future-oriented challenges.
The BMU provides you with a suitable overview of current competitions available.
6. growing vegetables in the garden
We used to have our own vegetable patches as children. This gave us a better feel for how plants grow and are cared for. And also that the food on our plates didn't come from the supermarket, but from nature. 😉
Simply get some plant seeds and clear a small corner in the garden or on the balcony for growing vegetables.
Tip: Contribution about Sustainable gardening you can also find out how to turn your garden into a real natural paradise. The little ones are sure to love it too!
7. hiking through nature trails
You are sure to find themed trails in your area to teach your child about protecting our environment. They use facts, sounds or games, for example, to impart new knowledge about our natural world. Educational trails are created on a wide variety of topics - whether soil, forest or air.
Tip: For some environmental or animal welfare organizations there are also youth areas. Maybe that's something for your child too!
8. read out inspirational sayings
Small sayings can have a big impact. For example, explaining a few quotes from famous people about environmental protection to your child can also raise environmental awareness. Here are some examples:
- "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- "Be the change you wish to see in this world." (Mahatma Gandhi)
- "Any stupid boy can crush a bug. But all the professors in the world can't make one." (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- "What we do today will determine what the world looks like tomorrow." (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)
At Environmental Protection and Sustainability Quotes you will find a whole collection of rousing sayings.
9. identify plants in nature together
You can find out together with your child which flowers, trees and other plants grow in your area. Simply grab a suitable book about plant species and try to identify the plants you see in the garden or on walks in nature.
Experience has shown that this works really well with the following books:
- "What's blooming there?" by Ursula Stichmann-Marny and Dr. Heike Herrmann (you get here*)
- "Animal and plant guide" by Anita van Saan, Holger Haag and Bärbel Oftring (you get here*)
10. collect plastic waste together
Plastic waste in the environment is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Because it doesn't just disappear by itself. But we can help to reduce it ourselves. For example, by spontaneously cleaning up. So before you go for your next walk, simply grab some gloves or pliers and a large bag - and you can pick up a bit of garbage while you're at it. It's fun, gets you moving and is good for the environment.
Of course, this also works great in an organized form with an entire school class or your child's friends. You can find out more in the article about the Organize a CleanUp. You are also welcome to be part of our global CleanUp Community on Facebook become. People from all over the world share their clean-up campaigns there.
Tip: Also By the way, you can all collect garbage together on vacation. It welds us together and is something different.
11. visit a grace farm
Is the circus with animals is still up to date? Or the Keeping wild species in zoos? In my opinion, rather not. Cramped cages, small enclosures and cruel training methods are anything but species-appropriate and animal-friendly. However, a visit to a sanctuary is an extremely educational way of giving children direct contact and new experiences with larger animals. It makes it clear that all Animals are sentient beings and gives you a feeling for where cow's milk, pork and other animal products come from.
You can also get more tips in the article Help animals in everyday life.
Notice: Of course, you can also visit an animal shelter together. However, it can be assumed that your child will want to rescue a dog, cat or mouse. So be aware of this in advance in case an animal doesn't fit in well with your life plans at the time and you want to avoid disappointing your child 😉.
12. upcycling a wooden table together
Children like to tinker and build! Why don't you just build your new kitchen table yourself from old oak planks before you order it on the internet for a lot of money and with lots of plastic waste? A unique piece with a personal story instead of impersonal mass-produced goods - sounds cool, doesn't it? Here are some examples from the DIY furniture blog for inspiration:
- Build desk yourself
- Build dining table yourself
- Build bedside table yourself
- Build coffee table yourself
Warning: Please take care of your fingers! Handling tools such as saws or hammers is not without danger!
13. watch videos & movies
The internet is full of useful explanatory videos on the topics of sustainability and environmental protection that are also child-friendly. I have embedded one of them above.
ZDF's youth program "ZDFtivi" also repeatedly deals with environmental problems and their solutions. The "Sendung mit der Maus" or "Wissen macht Ah!" are of course also highly recommended.
Tip for adults: The Dominion film is about the background of the Factory farmingwhich is responsible for many of the biggest environmental problems of our time. After that, I had the absolute urge to change something about it. My honest assessment: hard to watch, but extremely effective.
14. let children join the household
If you are already very live sustainablythe whole thing is of course even easier. Whether for your child or yourself - the following articles are guaranteed to help you:
Tip: Surely you will also find in the article 100 Good deeds in everyday life plenty of additional inspiration!
15. make environmental protection quiz
If you want to introduce your child to a conscious approach to nature, you can do this in a fun way with a classic environmental quiz. After all, quizzes are entertaining, challenging and educational - all in one.
A good environmental quiz is available both digitally on the Internet and in a haptic paper form to turn the pages. Here are some recommendations:
- WAS IST WAS Quiz Nature (you get here*)
- Environmental quiz from ökoLeo (you can do online here)
Tip: By the way, it's not just children who can be inspired to protect the environment! Find out in the linked article how you can also inspire older generations, such as your Bringing parents closer to sustainability simply by following your heart.
Explaining and teaching children about environmental protection - simple and important!
I think that you now have a lot of tips at hand that you can use to promote environmental awareness and sensitize children to sustainability. Make your child aware that every person can make a difference and become the solution to the problems of our time. Greta Thunberg is a walking example of this. Get out and about together more by bike and on foot than by car. Be aware that every food has a story - and that all our everyday actions have an impact on our environment in some way.
In the best case scenario, the teachers at school also play their part! For example, by regularly collecting garbage in the playground or explaining environmental problems and their solutions. In the article Environmental protection in school you can also pick up some inspiration.
Do you have any questions or suggestions about environmental protection for children? Or can you think of any other tips? Then please write me a comment!
Stay exemplary,
PS: Whether it's a vet, teacher or engineer for wind turbines - you can also look into sustainable professions together. And who knows - when your offspring grows up, he'll find a job in the CareElite Job Portal perhaps even a suitable environmentally friendly profession with real added value for the environment and society.
