Raising sustainability awareness among today’s children, who will protect our world in the future, has become a primary responsibility for all of us. Sustainability is much more than a simple concept; it reflects our commitment and responsibility to nature, our environment and each other. Giving children this awareness is a very important step in raising them as environmentally friendly individuals of the future.
So, how can we explain sustainability to children? Sustainability education can be seen as a complex and technical subject, but it is possible to explain it in child-friendly and fun ways!
1. What is Sustainability?
Sustainability is a way of life that expresses our love and respect for our environment and natural resources. It involves living without depleting natural resources, protecting the environment and ensuring that future generations can benefit from these resources. When explaining sustainability to children, it is important to emphasize that it is part of their daily lives. As children recognize the beauty and resources that nature offers them, they will develop a desire to protect these resources.
2. Why Sustainability Matters for Children?
As the adults of the future, children have a critical role in protecting the environment and creating a sustainable world. Giving them environmental awareness at an early age lays the foundation for building societies that can live without harming nature and the environment. In this process, developing children’s awareness of sustainability not only raises individuals who do not harm the environment, but also contributes to their growth as leaders who can find solutions to environmental problems. These values, which they acquire at an early age, help children become empathetic, responsible and socially conscious individuals. Inspiring them and ensuring their active participation is one of the most important steps in building a more sustainable future.
3. Key Elements of Sustainability Education
Nature and Environmental Awareness:
The most effective way to instill a love of nature in children is to explore nature with them. Going on nature walks, visiting parks and forests makes them realize how diverse and fascinating the plants and animals around us are. During such activities, it can be fun to explain to children how nature works. For example, explaining in simple language how trees produce oxygen and why this is important for us to breathe will engage them. As children get to know nature, they begin to value it and feel a responsibility to protect it. We can motivate them to protect nature by using positive statements such as “Did you know that if we take good care of this tree, birds can nest here safely?”. Also, participating in local environmental cleanups or planting a tree can help children feel that they are directly contributing to nature and help them carry the responsibility of protecting nature into their daily lives.
Recycling and Waste Management:
Teaching children the importance of recycling and how to do it is a great way to teach them environmental awareness. Creating recycling bins for different materials in your home can help children get into the habit of sorting waste into plastic, paper, glass and metal. To make this process more fun, you can decorate the bins with colorful labels and present recycling as a game.
Energy and Water Conservation:
To teach children how to save energy and water, we can offer simple steps that they can apply in their daily lives. Practical steps such as turning off the lights when leaving the room, unplugging unused electronic devices, turning off the water while brushing their teeth or shortening the shower
time will help children grow up as environmentally conscious individuals and support the development of sustainability awareness.
4. Sustainable Activities with Children
Garden and Nature Projects:
One of the most effective ways to raise children’s environmental awareness is to organize activities where they can establish cause-and-effect relationships. You can plant vegetables in pots in your home garden or on the balcony so that they can understand where the food they consume every day comes from, how it is formed and how laborious it is to obtain these foods. Working with the soil, observing the growth process of the plants they plant with their own hands and taking care of them helps them understand the cycle of nature while developing their sense of responsibility.
Upcycling Activities:
As important as recycling is in terms of bringing resources back into consumption, we can do better to protect our nature and our future. How? By upcycling!
One of the great things about upcycling is that it shows that not everything is trash and can be used for new purposes with creativity. Making creative upcycling projects with children by utilizing unused materials at home allows them to actively participate in this process and develop environmental awareness.
Turning lost socks into hand puppets instead of throwing them away, or painting unused cardboard boxes in different patterns to create a playground for your pet, encourages children to use their imagination and dexterity to give new life to waste materials. For more upcycling ideas, check out our blog post on the New Trend in Sustainability: Upcycling! Such activities not only instill an awareness of sustainability in children, but also teach them how to respect nature and resources more.
5. Educational Tools and Resources
Books and Educational Materials:
Nurturing children’s imagination and curiosity about nature is not limited to spending time outdoors. At home, you can also raise environmental awareness by using nature-themed books and educational materials that will interest them. Collecting leaves together, storing stones collected from nature in jars or reading stories about nature in the evenings before going to sleep can help reinforce children’s love of nature. Especially fairy tales and stories with nature-friendly heroes convey the importance of protecting nature to children in a fun way. Studying books about animals, trees and insects, rather than just fairy tales or storybooks, will strengthen the tiny steps children will take towards becoming more environmentally conscious individuals.
A list of fun and educational children’s books that are a must-have for your bookshelf:
1. Tree of Life / The Amazing Biological Differences of Living Species – Rochelle Strauss (6-10 years)
The Tree of Life, written by Rochelle Strauss, is a colorful, full-color book about the incredible variability and biodiversity of life on Earth, accompanied by dazzling illustrations! Winner of the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children’s Book Award and the Green World Book Award, the book aims to raise environmental awareness and consciousness in children by emphasizing the need to protect the habitats of living things in order to preserve the ecosystem.
2. The Tiny Seed – Eric Carle (4+ years)
When the strong autumn winds begin, a tiny seed sets off on a long journey with other large seeds. The journey is fraught with danger, but against all odds, the tiny seed grows into a giant
flower, and when autumn returns, it scatters its own seeds to the winds and the whole process begins again. Eric Carle’s expressive pen and dazzling collages transform the simple life cycle of a plant into a thrilling story, a nature lesson and an inspiring tale about the importance of resilience. The illustrations and stories are so captivating that it is hard not to be moved.
Eric Carle, whose stories are based on his own childhood experiences and his interest in nature, has written many fascinating books, and we strongly recommend you to check out his other works.
3. Mother Nature Tells – Carl Ewald (9+ years)
In this book, the sea speaks, rocks speak, grasshoppers, comets, storks, bees speak. Everything we see in nature speaks and reveals all its secrets. Nature tells its own story in this book, which was the best friend of many children in the years before the documentaries and even televisions that we love to watch today. Little readers will have fun and learn a lot about the world we live in while getting lost in the pages.
4. Tree Atlas – Dr. Fatih Dikmen (5+ years)
52 beautiful trees from 52 countries in this atlas! It is a guide for all adventurous readers who want to travel the world, explore the farthest reaches of the earth and meet the unique trees of each habitat. At the end of this adventure, you and your child can turn the information explained throughout the book into a game with the giant world map and tree stickers inside the atlas, and identify the places where you dream of hugging trees.
5. My Playmate Earth – Jennifer Ward (4+ years)
“My Playmate Earth” gives them a wonderful opportunity to include one of the greatest joys of childhood in their lives: Spending time outdoors, in nature.
The book contains 52 activities that can be done with children, separated for each of the four seasons. Some are lively, some are full of discovery, and some are relaxing activities for listening to nature and yourself. And you don’t necessarily need to go to a forest! Wherever you are, in a patch of greenery in the city or in one of the wide open spaces of the countryside, all the games will help you strengthen your connection with nature.
Online Platforms:
There are many educational and entertaining platforms on the internet to teach children about sustainability. Eco Kids Planet is an award-winning magazine and digital platform that introduces children to nature and science in a fun way. Through stories, activities and projects, children discover how nature works and how to protect our planet, while putting this knowledge into practice through fun competitions and creative challenges.
Another great resource is the Global Goals/children’s website, which provides downloadable coloring books, videos and activities on sustainability and environmental awareness.
6. Integrating Sustainability Awareness into Daily Life
Home Applications:
There is a way to not only recycle materials such as plastic, glass and paper, but also to recycle natural waste: Compost! Moreover, composting is a great way to teach children about the cycle of nature. Prepare an empty bucket for compost on your balcony or in a convenient corner of your
kitchen. Throw in your all-natural, vegetable and unprocessed wastes such as vegetable and fruit scraps and use them as compost. While preparing this, you can explain to your children the importance of using vegetables/fruits with minimum damage, from the peel to the stems.
Activities with the Family:
No matter how difficult camping with your children may seem to you, it will become much more enjoyable when you think of it as a new adventure you will realize together. What could be a better memory than having breakfast together in nature, taking walks, climbing trees, jumping off rocks and even chatting while watching the stars at night?
7. Inspiring Children
Environment Themed Documentaries and Films:
One of the most effective ways to instill a love of nature in children is to awaken their curiosity through documentaries and movies. The Studio Ghibli films of animation master Hayao Miyazaki are very inspiring in this regard. In his stories, nature is not just a background, but sometimes a protagonist.
‘Princess Mononoke’ about San’s struggle to protect the forest where she was raised by wolves and ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ about two little sisters’ warm relationship with nature are among the best narratives you can watch in this field. These films, where all viewers from 7 to 70 can find something from themselves and life, tackle deep issues with a naive sincerity.
Premiering at the 81st Venice Film Festival, the documentary ‘Miyazaki, Spirit of Nature‘ seems to be an important production and a source of inspiration that explores how nature themes are handled in Miyazaki’s works and how his films nurture the love of nature. Although the release date of the documentary has not yet been announced, it is worth staying tuned to understand how the director, who gave the world a lifetime of joy and entertainment with his Studio Ghibli films, gave life to his works with his boundless passion for nature!
Shaping the Future with Small Steps
Knowing how small beginnings can change our living habits and how big changes this can cause in nature, and in this direction, raising sustainability awareness in our children is one of the most important steps we can take for our future.
This awareness they acquire at an early age raises them as environmentally conscious and responsible individuals. Strengthening their relationship with nature and the environment, helping them acquire habits such as recycling and energy conservation will determine the steps they will take towards building a sustainable future.
Inspiring and empowering our children to take an active role in sustainability is our responsibility to make our world a better place to live. These tiny but conscious steps taken at a young age can be the pioneers of big changes.
Our children, the guardians of the future, are our best hope to protect this world and adopt a sustainable lifestyle.
