To celebrate Earth Day yesterday, I gathered some friends and brought a 'Recylced Art' project to Lily's pre-school.  Since we had such a great response when we did the 'water bottle bracelets' at the Playful Planet launch party (click that link to watch a video) that I asked Heidi Borchers (a.k.a. Eco-Heidi) to come on out and play with us on Earth Day.

The results were great once again! The kids seemed to really enjoy seeing something mundane and plain (like a plastic water bottle) end up looking great AND they really took pride in having created it themselves. We talked a bit about the fact that we were reusing something that might end up in the trash otherwise.

Even more exciting is that from our experience yesterday we now plan to create a monthly curriculum for pre-schoolers. Our long-term goal is to provide the curriculum on a larger scale to pre-schools, Pre-K, and even Kindergarten classes when it is fully developed. Each month we will bring in a new age-appropriate 'project' that features re-using common materials into something new.  As Heidi has said, her 'job' is to spark people's imagination for creative recycling. I love that she has claimed this as her job!  My new job (or one of them, I should say...) is to help her do her job!

The 40th anniversary of Earth Day seemed to inspire a slew of messages, but one that stood out to me was one from Al Gore. He said "Despite the name, Earth Day is really about humanity." So simple and so true. For years I have loved to recall the comic genius of George Carlin who used to do a schtick about the fact that the earth will be here long after humans are dead and gone -- 'the earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas" -- are the words he used, I believe.  So to all the "global warming" naysayers, I would simply say, "Really? Is it such a bad idea that we would develop practices to limit the amount of toxins we put out and reduce the amount of resources we use so that our kids kids might have something left for them to enjoy?"

Stay Playful,

Karen