New Home!

Our site has been moved, again, to its own dedicated url www.ecochildsplay.com. There are still a few glitches to be worked out, but we are excited to be joining Green Options, while still maintaining our independence.

Our New Home

The migration has occurred, and we are officially posting at our new home on http://www.ecochildsplay.com. Please follow this link, bookmark the site, add us to your feeds, etc. to read the daily posts until we have the old urls redirecting to our new home. We are excited about our partnership with Green Options, the new writers we will be welcoming to the blog, and the opportunity to reach a broader audience. Our content will be expanding to include green family news, education, and of course, natural toy reviews. By making this move, we are joining a "community dedicated to environmental resources, education, and discussion." We hope that you will also see the benefit of community, as they only way we can bring about change, and find ways to contribute by creating your own Green Options Journal.

Great Children's Literature: Fire Race

If you are a true localvore, does that mean you read local tales to your children? I try to chose local goods as much as possible, and I have always had an affinity for Native American stories. In California Native American tales, Coyote is often the trickster. In Fire Race, Coyote is up to his old tricks and steals fire from the Yellow Jacket Sisters.

Fire Race is beautifully illustrated by Sylvia Long, and the illustrations hold true to Karuk traditions in the garb of the animal characters. For example, Coyote wears a basket cap traditional to the Karuk Tribe. The Karuk Tribe resides in far northern California along the Klamath River. Fire Race tells the traditional tale of how Coyote appealed to the vanity of the yellow jacket sisters to steal their fire. The race begins, with many local animals passing the fire to one another as the yellow jacket sisters chase them. Eventually, the fire is swallowed into the wood, where it is stored today for us to burn and stay warm.

I just love this book! It has always been one of my favorites as a teacher and a parent. There are so many things to discuss, such as the vanity of the Yellow Jacket Sisters and the cooperative effort of the animals. I love to connect the story to our hearth for our children, as we give thanks for the warmth our woodstove provides us. It is a gift from the land.

Change is in the Air

It is not only the weather that is changing around here at Eco Child's Play: change is in the air. All I can say is we have big plans, all of which should be ready in time for San Francisco Green Fest. At this point, I will give you one clue: Green Options. Stay tuned...

With all the changes to Eco Child's Play, I have started a new blog on children's literature. Good Friends, Good Books. It is in its infancy, but I am excited to have started a new adventure in blogging. The purpose of this new blog is to review children's literature, as well as provide a space that teachers, parents, and children can submit their own reviews of favorite books. Eventually, there will be free prizes for children's submissions, and of course, funds will be donated to the Literacy Site.

Five Ideas for Buying In Bulk

There are so many beneficial reasons to buy in bulk, so this simple green practice is easy and rewarding to implement. Living an hour away from the nearest grocery store, buying our food and personal products in bulk is a necessity of mountain life. The survivalist in me does not feel comfortable unless my pantry is stocked with staple goods bought in bulk. Not only does buying in bulk make life more convenient by saving trips to the grocery store, it saves money and environmental resources as well. Bulk good prices are cheaper than individually packaged goods, and fewer trips to the store means less fossil fuel burned and more leisure time for you! The following five ideas will help you make the most of buying in bulk.

Don’t limit bulk purchases to food items only!

Buying shampoo, laundry soap, dish soap, toilet paper, etc. is also beneficial to the environment and your wallet. Even if an item is not available in bulk at your local co-op or health food store, buying the largest size possible will give you similar savings financially and environmentally.

Bring your own containers!

When buying from bulk bins, bring your own containers. You can weigh your jars before filling them, in order to subtract the tare weight from the total purchase weigh. In addition, you will always buy the right amount for your containers if you take them along with you to the bulk foods aisle. If you must use plastic bags, try reusing them several times before recycling them.

Start a buying club and share with friends!

You will save a lot more money if you buy your own bulk bags of staple goods, such as rice and flour, directly from a natural foods distributor. Fifteen years ago, we started a buying club with friends through Mountain People’s Warehouse, which would deliver goods once a month to a neighboring town. Several families would take turns picking up the buying club’s order, and we had great fun sharing bulk items we couldn’t use completely or afford alone. By combining our orders, we easily met the minimum required order amount of this natural foods distributor. Even if you don’t want to start a buying club, you can order your own bulk goods through your local health food store for a small price above wholesale.

Buy big amounts, save packaging!

The larger the quantity you buy, the less packaging is involved. Be wary, though, of large warehouse stores that simply sell you cases of prepackaged individual goods; this is not bulk buying! For example, Aveda reports that when you buy liter size bottles of shampoo, you can help prevent waste.

Aveda litres use 40% less plastic and cost 30% less than the equivalent product in regular size bottles. Larger sizes mean we have to produce, and ship, fewer bottles. This means we send out fewer trucks that emit CO2 — the primary cause of global warming — into the atmosphere.

Imagine how much would be saved by buying gallon jugs of shampoo!

Store your bulk items in gallon-sized glass jars!

The safety of plastics used in food storage is questionable, and glass mason jars offer a safe alternative. Many health food distributors also carry gallon glass jars that are perfect for storing bulk food. Many people also use food grade five-gallon buckets for home bulk food storage, but I prefer glass jars.

When you buy in bulk, you tend to eat healthier, as there are less packaged, processed foods on hand in the kitchen. Diving into your staples on a winter day is a great way to eat well and do a little bit to save the environment, too. Save money, time, and resources by following this simple tip.

This post originally appeared on Green Options.

No More Junk Toys!

Holiday season fanfare has already begun, and I am reminded of my holiday motto: No more junk toys! Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and/or the Winter Solstice, if you have children, you know what junk toys are. Junk toys are toys that will have little educational value, are usually made of plastic, are overly commercial, and end up in our landfills. Green parents often try to make these toys disappear, but it is better to prevent their buying and giving in the first place.

Four years ago, before America was awash in greenwashing, Mothering Magazine featured a great article title "No More Junk Toys: Rethinking Children’s Gifts" by Judith Rubin. Rubin writes,

Like junk food, junk toys can be fun but are devoid of nutrition. Buying them requires little forethought. They are excessively commercial, and are often linked to cross-marketing schemes. They excite children at first, but that initial flicker doesn’t endure. Also like junk food, junk toys have hidden environmental and social costs for which the consumers pay.

The environmental and social costs of junk toys are huge! Plastic toys are often made in sweatshops, sometimes by children themselves, and many of them send the wrong kind of messages to children. For example, Bratz Dolls sexualize young girls, as well as have unfair labor practices, and Barbie’s proportions are unrealistic. According to Empoweredparents.com,

If she were alive, Barbie would be a woman standing 7 feet tall with a waistline of 18 inches and a bustling of 38-40. In fact, she would need to walk on all fours just to support her peculiar proportions. Yet media advertising, television and Hollywood would reinforce her message, influencing what would become the American ideal of beauty.

Besides the materials and energy used in the production of junk toys, these plastic toys end up in landfills and oceans. Life Magazine reported that there is a swath of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. Life reports, "Except for the small amount that has been incinerated — and it’s a very small amount — every bit of plastic made still exists."

The safety of toys made in China has been in question lately with the recent rave of recalls. Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law a ban on toys containing phthalates. The Governator said, "These chemicals threaten the health and safety of our children at critical stages of their development." Phthalates have been linked to cancer and reproductive problems. This follows a ban last year in San Francisco on toys containing BPA and certain levels of phthalates. Despite such legal actions, junk toys still dominate the toy shelves.

How can you tell a junk toy from a good toy? Field naturalist Alicia Daniel offers the following list of questions to ask when selecting toys:

1. Will this toy eventually turn into dirt-i.e., could I compost it? Stones, snowmen, driftwood, and daisies-they will be gone, and we will be gone, and life goes on.
2. Do I know who made this toy? This question leads us to search for the hidden folk artist in each of us.
3. Is this toy beautiful? Have human hands bestowed an awkward grace, a uniqueness lacking in toys cranked out effortlessly by machine?
4. Will this toy capture a child’s imagination?

Every year, I send my family a reminder that we do not want any plastic toys or clothes made from synthetic fibers. I wish I could say that they always followed our wishes, but somehow, the message flies out the window when they see some "adorable" plastic thing they think my children can’t live without. My husband has changed the motto to "No More Toys" this year, but the grandparents have already scoffed at the idea. Perhaps I should try sending my family Alicia Daniel’s list to help them make appropriate gift selections. If we are going to tell our children to reduce, reuse, recycle, shouldn’t our holiday gift giving and receiving reflect this practice?

This post originally appeared on Green Options.

Great Children's Literature: Spiders Spin Webs

Spiders Spin Webs was given to us one birthday, along with many other books from an older child's collection. The regifting of books children have outgrown is a very eco-friendly idea, and I have always been delighted to discover new books through such gifts. Spiders Spin Webs was a pleasant surprise amongst the books we received.

Spiders Spin Webs is written by Yvonne Winer and illustrated by Karen Lloyd-Jones. Each page begins with the line, "Spiders spin webs...." and features rhyming words and amazing, detailed illustrations. For example,

Spiders spin webs
In the heart of the night,
Weaving filigreed patterns
In the soft mooonlight.
That's when spiders spin webs.

Spiders Spin Webs is full of rare words, like filigreed, that expand children's growing vocabulary. Reading this book gives children (and adults) appreciation of these little eight legged creatures that invade our homes and Halloween hearts.

Beware of Hybrid Vehicles in Parking Lots

Today’s tip is a safety tip cautioning readers to be aware of the "dangers" of hybrid and electric vehicles to pedestrians. Last week, my children and I were almost hit by a Prius in a health food store parking lot. I can imagine the headline: "Environmentalist run over by a hybrid vehicle." Ironic, eh?

My near-encounter with the Prius occurred because the car was running on its electric motor, thus making the car virtually silent. As the Prius backed out of its parking space, I was caught by surprise and realized how much I rely on my ears to warn me of traffic. We tell children to "look both ways and listen" for cars when crossing streets, but as our fleet moves toward hybrid vehicles (and hopefully electric ones, too), we will need to adjust which senses we rely on to keep us safe in parking lots and crossing roads.

I am not the only one to be startled by a low noise car. In particular, hybrid vehicles running on their electric motors especially affect blind people, who rely on their sense of hearing in traffic. According to the Wall Street Journal,

"Michael Osborn, a blind marketing consultant from Laguna Beach, Calif., and his guide dog, Hastings, were in the middle of an intersection one morning last April when the yellow Lab stopped short. Mr. Osborn took the cue and halted — just in time to feel the breeze from a car passing right in front of them. ‘Half an inch and it would have hit us … it wasn’t making any noise,’ says Mr. Osborn, 50, who has been blind for 12 years. Witnesses say the car was a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle."

The National Federation of the Blind is advocating hybrid and electric vehicles emit a sound when turned on, and many guide dog schools are now including hybrid vehicles in their training course. The proposed sound device would alert a sensor carried by the vision impaired to alert them of a hybrid in the vicinity. In response to the concern, Denise Morrissey, a spokeswoman for Toyota Motor Sales USA stated, "The [industry] trend is toward quiet powertrains in all sorts of vehicles. That trend has raised the need for other drivers and pedestrians to increase caution and to be more aware of the surroundings."

I don’t know what the solution is, and I certainly like less noise pollution. The sound of an electric powered car is beautiful in its quietude, and I can only imagine how our city streets would sound if the electric vehicle had not been "killed." As pedestrians, we must be more aware and mindful of our surroundings as more and more hybrid vehicles are on the road. For drivers of hybrid or electric vehicles, pay special attention around pedestrians, especially the blind, who may not be aware of your presence. As our streets become quieter and our awareness grows, perhaps we will once again be able to hear the birds’ songs in the bustling city.