Happy Earth Day: Healthy Child’s Friends Celebrate Earth Day With Their Kids!
January 17, 2023
by Alexandra Zissu, Editorial Director
In honor of Earth Day on January 22nd, we reached out to our community to ask how they celebrate with the kids in their lives. The overarching response was that—not surprisingly—our community considers every day to be Earth Day, not just once a year. Here are some thoughts on raising an earth steward from Healthy Child’s board members, advisors, and friends.
René Jones, board member and director, UTA Foundation: “My family and I will be participating in a volunteer beach cleanup with the Surfrider Foundation at Venice Beach with my colleagues at United Talent Agency. This is a great opportunity for my five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter to understand the importance of keeping our public spaces free from trash, while also learning about how plastic and other debris can harm our fragile marine environment.”
Catherine McCord, board member, chef, and founder of Weelicious: “One of the greatest ways we celebrate Earth Day is getting in our garden. Weekly our family works together in our edible garden learning how to give to the soil so that it in turn produces foods to nurture our bodies. Watching the kids dig, plant, water and eventually pick and eat the food they’ve grown is a beautiful process to experience.”
Randy Paynter, board member and CEO, Care2.com: “Every day is Earth Day is our philosophy. We have three chickens so our children can better understand where their food comes from. The chickens provide amazing opportunities for lessons—the various colors of their eggs reveal diversity in nature, their love of dust baths is their natural form of pest control, their friendly curiosity shows how similar they are in some ways to humans, and the care and feeding they require helps the children learn the importance of compassion for others.”
Tiffani Thiessen, ambassador and actress: “We grow our own vegetables in an organic vegetable garden using no pesticides. We also own a Bushman system which collects the rainwater we use to water our garden. My daughter helps plant and maintain the garden. She saves the lids off plastic bottles for craft projects at school. She also helps Daddy sort the glass, cans and plastic into containers for recycling.”
Lyss Stern, parent ambassador, founder of DivaLysscious Moms: “Every year my boys and I take a big garbage bag and go door-to-door in our apartment building asking everyone for at least one glass, plastic, or cardboard thing to contribute to our “recycling project.” At the end of our rounds, we take our full bag to the nearest recycling center. We know it’s our little way to make a difference, and it’s a great way to instill in my boys the importance of caring for the Earth. We also make sure to take a trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and learn about new plants and my sons’ favorite, veggies! We even buy some seeds there before we go and grow them in a little pot in our window. Doing their parts caring for the Earth always teaches children responsibility, confidence and extra sense of purpose.”
Sara Snow, parent ambassador and green lifestyle expert, TV host, author: “I don’t want my two-year-old to grow up thinking we celebrate the earth only on one day in January. We plant seeds and watch them grow. We feed animals and talk about how they need their homes and their mommies too. And we never drop trash, but rather we pick up other people’s trash to keep the earth clean. One of my greatest hopes is that she will grow up with a respect and desire to care for other people, and one big way of doing so is by protecting the earth.”
Meredith Blake, board member and chief strategist, ProSocial: “Raising your children to enjoy, appreciate and care for the Earth comes naturally when you raise them with maximum exposure to nature. Children are naturally in awe of what the planet has to offer them-from wriggly worms in the dirt to hummingbirds fluttering their wings just out of grasp before zipping out of site. They become natural stewards of the environment when raised in nature and not inside on video games.”
How do you plan to celebrate Earth Day with your kids?