Part of raising kids to be good people is to help them become better citizens. Contributing to their community should feel like a pleasure as well as a duty. One way to get kids ready to help their friends and neighbors is by organizing a community clean-up. This can help your kids understand that cleaning up the community is the first step toward helping and healing the planet. Prepare them with these tips for getting kids excited about a community clean-up.
Have Them Help With Advertising the Event
Kids love to be creative. Make them feel like a part of the proceedings from the beginning by having them advertise the event. Hold a contest for the best slogan or poster design. Winners get a prize and will have their slogan or poster reproduced in a more professional format to share online and around town. You can also make every kid a winner by using every poster submitted and allowing them to stick them up (with permission!) in their community. A little recognition by the adult world can help them feel more important and involved.
Make It an Event, Not a Chore
Few people look forward to any sort of organized cleaning, whether at home or outdoors. That’s why you need to make your community clean-up a fun event. Get the local government and merchants involved. Ask for donations of money, tools, talent, refreshments, and other elements that make the event a celebration of the neighborhood and the people in it.
Ask a local printer to donate T-shirts to identify participants. Request refreshments from a restaurant and ask store owners if they can provide garbage bags, gloves, and other items to make the work easier. Keep it fun, and the kids will come.
Garbage-Collecting Games
Be serious about health and safety before sending the kids out to pick up the park, neighborhood, or other area, but after that, find a fun way to work. Create a scavenger hunt by asking kids to look out for specific items to collect and throw away. Bottles, cans, and other recyclables should be worth a certain number of points.
Take Time To Teach
Let kids know what happens to trash once they collect it. Explain how recycling works and why landfills must contain only certain types of trash. Also, let them know that hazardous waste is everywhere. Even aerosol cans require special disposal as universal waste. Share fun facts via special trading cards you create before the event, and have an expert on trash collection show up and talk about the topic. Younger children will be fascinated by equipment like collection trucks and other devices.
Those are a few tips for getting kids excited about a community clean-up. Be sure to include the little ones and ask them for other suggestions. You’ll be surprised at how many good ideas they come up with.
