Green

It sure was a mistake to let Junior have a chocolate ice cream that day at the beach boardwalk. And here you are regretting it, years later, when you’re looking over that old Maclaren for #2. You spent a lot of money on that sucker! And it’s still perfectly solid; just a little grungy.

If you happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or the Los Angeles environs, Buggy Bubbles can help. For about $90, Buggy Bubbles will pick up your tot’s ride and make it sparkle like new: anything fabric is washed, anything plastic is de-grimed and shined, any moving parts are tightened and lubed. When it’s returned to you (or you pick it up), it’s clean, shiny, and in tip-top shape.

Visit Buggy Bubbles Detail Shop for more information.

Nothing thrills a kid more than a little private space: a closet they can crawl into with a flashlight, a secret room in the basement, a little playhouse in the back yard. But the GardenFort, a grow-your-own bower for the garden, has an even more mesmerizing feature: it’s a green and living private space! Buy the kit and you get the bower’s metal framework, and quick-growing vine seeds: black-eyed Susans, asparagus beans, and cypress.

Plant them along the bower’s bottom and wait: in just a few short weeks, green shoots will appear. When they get long enough to dangle, train them to twine along and up the bower. Within a few months you’ll have a green, growing play space, the very thing for fairy games and sylvan imaginings.

GardenFort, $70

Spring returns this weekend and with it every opportunity for our little cabin-fever monsters to roar outside with mud and sunshine. Help them get prepared and excited with this perfect books for gardening, nature, and cloud-watching.

Kids in the Garden by Elizabeth McCrodquodale (Ages 9-12)
This is a fun and accessible guide for beginning gardeners with more than 50 projects. Kids can learn all about what to grow, how to grow it, and creative and delicious ways to eat their produce with recipes like like rooty tooty soup, blueberry popsicles, pepper pots, and herby scones.

Loads of photographs and illustrations guide children to discover:
* Composting
* Seeds
* Tools & equipment
* Water cycle and watering
* Wildlife in the garden
* Pests
* Birdhouses

Author Elizabeth McCorquodale shares her knowledge and passion once again and helps us get our children outside and loving it.

Available at Amazon.com

Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld (Ages 4-8)
From the much esteemed children’s illustrator and author, Thomas Lichtenheld, comes the story of a slight and charming cumulus. As the story begins, we find Cloudette content with her size and station in the sky. She watches larger clouds create storms from afar and begins to wish she could be important too. She searches for a way in which to contribute, “She wanted to make a garden grow…She wanted to make a waterfall fall.” Before long her persistence pays off and she is able to turn dry into a perfect pond for needy frogs. Cloudette gives a sky-high and playful perspective on our atmosphere and giving the world all that we have.

Available at Amazon.com

How Things Work in the Yard by Lisa Campbell Ernst (Ages 4-8)
Your inquisitive youngster might find this entertaining yard book the perfect exploration guide.
Colorful pages are filled with facts and details about many outdoor items including bubbles, birds, nests, hoses, sprinklers, and rocks. Get them thinking about their surroundings in new and interesting ways, “Each ant has its own job. Some look for food, some take care of baby ants, some protect the nest, some take out the trash.”

Available at Amazon.com

It’s a great time of year for children to discover the weather, with all of it’s lion and lamb moments. March entertains young learners with it’s ever-changing wind, precipitation, and temperature. The simple pleasures of childhood abound: rain, mud, and returning sunshine.

A great addition to your child’s earth education is the new book by Christiane Dorian and Beverley Young, How the Weather Works: A Hands-on Guide to Our Changing Climate. Kids can interact with this bursting and vibrant book with the many pull-tabs, pop-ups, and booklets to learn about many topics including:

* Where does the rain come from?
* What’s a weather front?
* Why does the wind blow?
* How can we predict the weather?
* What is climate?

Children are also encouranged to consider how humans can influence the climate of Earth with information on fossil fuels, greenhouse effect, and the melting glaciers.

Available at Amazon.com

Even the most eco-conscious parent can get an occasional surprise about the toxic dangers that lurk in ordinary objects. Case in point: markers. Many ordinary brands contain worrisome chemicals like toluene, cresol, n-butane, and other chemical nasties that should not be put on skin, inhaled, and most definitely not eaten. Yet who doesn’t want to give a green marker an experimental lick to make sure it’s not minty?

The solution: Stock your house with non-toxic markers like Clementine Art’s Natural Markers. The four-pack of vibrant colors (yellow, orange, purple, and pink) are made with natural coloring (like beet juice) instead of weird chemical pigments with an FDA number attached to them. Suck them with abandon, toddlers. Suck with abandon.

If you like Clementine’s markers, the company has a whole line of natural art products. Paint, modeling clay, crayons, even natural glue made from wheat, not hooves. You can buy a gift box with all their products for $49.

Clementine Art Natural Markers, $5.99

It’s officially fall, Harvest Moon and all.

You and your family have no doubt noticed the darkness creeping in earlier in the evening and staying longer at dawn. Change is coming, but with it comes an opportunity for your little ones to become backyard naturalists. Old-fashioned outdoor play is back in (green) style.

The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook for Kids, Families, and Classrooms by Clare Walker Leslie takes your child through a month-by-month nature quest where they learn to observe their surroundings, ask questions, and embrace nature all year long.

Children follow simple activities, such as tracking sunrise and sunset times, and other simple journaling techniques to enhance their environmental education—observing plants, animals, and sky. A quick lesson in basic sketching techniques allows children to record seasonal observations.

Continued outdoor activity in children’s lives improves their physical fitness and mental health as well as fosters an important connection to the natural world around them. It’s so important that the Obama administration announced in April the creation of the America’s Great Outdoors initiative to develop a 21st century conservation and recreation agenda and to reconnect Americans, especially children, to nature.

Your child can explore: nature treasure maps, pretend play, nature writing, phases of the moon, tides and cycles, weather maps, and field expeditions.

And it’s free.

Available at Amazon.com

Additional Nature Connection Worksheets

Clare Walker Leslie is a naturalist, author, artist and educator.

If making your own baby food sounds a bit more homegrown and hippyish then you are used to, there is a new cookbook that might make you think again. Consider this—nutrients in jarred baby food can be  depleted when cooked at high temperatures during the preservation process. Jarred baby food can also be much more expensive.

When chief Washington correspondent and anchor for MSNBC Norah O’Donnell watched her husband Chef Geoff Tracy easily whip up nutritional baby food for their own children, she was amazed at how simple it could be. Baby Love: Healthy, Easy, Delicious Meals for Your Baby and Toddler was born out of their desire to share tips, techniques and recipes to help families build a foundation for a lifetime of healthy living.

Baby Love includes:

- More than sixty gourmet-inspired recipes from Chef Geoff
- Tips for quick and nutritious preparation
- How to make two weeks worth of meals in less than one hour per week

Norah O’Donnell learned a lot about nutrition as she prepared this book and believes that what you feed your baby now will affect the rest of their lives.

We can’t wait to try: butternut and cranberry risotto, feelin’ peachy smoothie, and baby guacamole.

“We believe the time is ripe for change and look forward to a great baby food revolution.” -Norah O’Donnell

Available at Amazon.com

The Italians have given us design fabulosity in the form of Gucci, Prada, Armani, Alessi plus dozens of other celebrated brands. So it’s no wonder the Italians have managed to make even a sippy cup look chic.

Welcome mOmma, a beloved Italian line of feeding products for infants and toddlers. The mOmma brand has recently come stateside. The company’s roly-poly sippy cups (with and without straws) and spoon function like a Weeble - they wobble but they don’t fall down. So that means the part of the cup that touches Junior’s lips doesn’t come in contact with dirty tables and counter tops. The cup may tilt but will pop back up before touching the table. Bonus for you: fewer spills. Bonus for your bambino: BPA- and phthalate-free products. Plus the wobbling feeding accoutrements score high in the entertainment category.

MoMA’s design store in NYC will carry mOmma (pronounced with a long “O”) items. What better endorsement of mOmma’s ability to meld design and function. mOmma at MoMA.

mOmma is available at mOmmaus.com and amazon.com.

For many of us, survival depends on avoiding our kitchen. Rather than give our Viking range a workout, we take full advantage of restaurant deliveries, take-out and prepared (often overpriced) food from the local gourmet market. So the idea of giving up all of that is nothing short of frightening. But that’s exactly what one twenty-something in Brooklyn did.

Blogger and author Cathy Erway wanted to save money, consume less and eat more renewable sources. So she embarked on a culinary adventure in sustainability, chronicling her experiences in a blog, Noteatingoutinny.com. Swearing off restaurants, Erway took to communal dining, trash diving and dating sans the restaurant scene.

Her recently published memoir/cookbook, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, expands on her journey. The book is filled with recipes and stories of her two-year “experiment.” Bottom line: She was eventually reminded of the simple pleasures of cooking her own meals and sharing with friends.

Get going. Your stove awaits …

Available at Amazon.com

Even parents who shell out for organic cotton rompers and unbleached diapers usually fall down in the dress-up department. Yes, when a plastic pirate sword or sparkly cape your kid clamors for costs $7 at Target, it’s tough to say no–unless you realize that gorgeous, eco- and labor-friendly versions of the same items are online. The extra money is worth the lowered guilt. And the Earth, and the people on it will thank you for playing green.

Fairy Finery should be on your bookmark list for pretend play. Costumes and accessories are made in the U.S. by an ethical company that uses quality materials. Particularly choice: Fairy Finery’s soft toy sword, a cushy version of the plastic staple of pirate, knight, and “bad guy” games. Let the kids whack each other all they like with these soft swords, which have gorgeous, comfortable handles and natural wool blend felt over a sponge interior.

A Toy Garden is another bookmark to hold onto, with an inspiring collection of fairy costumes, princess hats and dresses, and capes, including this gorgeous dragon cape. Like all of Toy Garden’s wares, this cape is sewn by manufacturers certified by the Fair Trade Federation, and shipped in recycled packaging. The work-at-home mom who runs A Toy Garden even admits to dumpster diving to get packing materials. Many of Toy Garden’s goods are bought directly from the artisans who make them. This one is made in Sri Lanka, but you can be assured that it was made by workers making a fair wage and working fair hours.

Nova Naturals has a selection of stuff from the usual suspects (Sarah’s Silks, who makes a very popular line of princess wear and play silks), as well as more unusual accoutrement. Like this hand-crocheted “chain mail” hood, constructed of cotton yarn by artisans in Nepal. It’s soft and cozy yet looks fierce and warlike. That same kid you got the soft sword for will be over the moon.