Pretend Play: Composting

Guess what?! It's Week 5 of the Readathon and it's all about being kind to the Earth and being Green! We are lovin' the 2 free ebooks this week, Let's Go Chipper: Into the Great Outdoors and What Does it Mean to Be Green? Both books have some fabulous ways to love the Earth and reduce your carbon footprint.

I had a few ideas on what we might do as an activity this week, but Sweet P beat me to it. Read on to see how:  

Pretend Play: Composting might sound a bit weird, but composting around our house is as common as throwing something in the trash or recycling bin. So while it sounds weird, it should come as no surprise that when Sweet P plays in her play kitchen, she also composts.

We use plastic bags we've saved (even though we use reusable bags, somehow plastic bags still find a way into our house!) for our compost because it's what works best for us right now. The Farmer takes the bags out to the farm and puts them into our compost bins. At some point we hope to get a bin for our compost instead of using plastic bags in the house, but right now our kitchen is a wee bit cramped. Anyway, the plastic bag hangs on the door to the basement and we've taught Sweet P to throw apple cores, banana peels, orange peels, etc. into the bag.

One day I hauled a bunch of stuff up to her room using a plastic bag and after we put the stuff away she asked for the bag.

Sweet P: "I need it for my compost."

And pretend play compost began.

Monday we were playing upstairs and she was cutting fruit, veggies and bread (while Sprout was eating it) from 2 different sets of Melissa & Doug wooden food when she said, "I need a compost bag." Instead of going to find a plastic bag, I said "Why don't you use your reusable bag?"...so she did!

As she cut up her fruit, she'd drop pieces she deemed unworthy of consumption into the bag. She also took a whole tomato and said, "This is all moldy" and tossed it in.

I have to be honest that I never thought we'd be playing "Composting" with our kids, but there I was!

Here are a few other things we do around here (read more in What Does it Mean to be Green?) to reduce our carbon footprint:

• Recycle (you can read more about that in this post)
• Grow our own vegetables and buy local as often as possible 
• Eat produce that is in season
• This was hard for me until we had our own garden, but now I refuse to buy fresh tomatoes out of season. Nothing compares to garden fresh tomatoes!
• Walk to the library (we can't walk many places from our house, but the library is super close so we walk as often as we can, even in snow!)
• Save clothes for future siblings
• Turn off the water while we brush our teeth
• Draw on recycled paper (I save any and all scrap paper so she can draw on the back)
• and we DEFINITELY eat our ice cream out of a cone! (read the ebook if this is confusing!)

One we're working on:

• Shutting off the water while we rub the soap on our hands

Check out the MeMeTales Pinterest Board for more Earth Based Books, Activities, Crafts and Learning Curriculum.

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