Self Organizing - Reusable Canvas Totes

Overview
Canvas tote bags are a great way to reduce the use of paper and plastic grocery bags.  Your family can decorate them with environmental messages and use them at the grocery store or give them to others to use. A grocery store might distribute them to customers for you, for free. A local nature center may be interested in giving the environmental tote bags you make to a group of students participating in an environmental education program, to teach the students what part they can play in protecting the environment.  A food pantry would be pleased to accept the bags, particularly filled with gifts of food inside.  (Contact a specific food pantry for details on their needs and regulations.)

Goals

• To raise awareness about environmental issues and what families can do to help
• To reduce waste by lessening our use of disposable paper and plastic bags, which use up valuable resources to make, including forests and petroleum and end up filling landfills

Supporting Organizations

• Nature centers
• Grocery stores
• Food pantries

Materials
Each volunteer should make at least ten bags.

• Canvas bags (possible source: Cheaptotes.com, for $0.99 each)
• Pencils
• Fabric markers or permanent markers
• Stencils - Environmentally themed (animals, trees, flowers)
• Cardboard from cereal boxes or other boxes, so that markers do not bleed through

Instructions

• Connect with a supporting organization to ensure they can accept your donation of tote bags. Find out how many they need, If you are interested in the grocery store option, ask the store whether they would distribute the finished tote bags to their customers at the registers, or if your family could set a table up and hand the bags to customers on their way in.

• Start out by reading a book or fact sheet from the "Resources" section below and leading a "Preflection" talk with your family.
• Choose or develop environmental slogans or messages to write on the bags, and pictures to illustrate.  Picture ideas can be taken from stencils, if you have them, or from children's books about animals or nature.
• Trace, write or draw the messages and pictures in pencil first, using stencils if desired.
• Use fabric markers or permanent markers to add color. Put a piece of cardboard inside the bag before using markers so that the ink does not bleed through to the other side.

Additional Resources

Environmental Fact Sheet for Kidsat www.HandsOnNetwork.org/FamilyVolunteering/ServiceLearning

Earth Book for Kids: Activities to Help Heal the Environment by Linda Schwartz
A book written in a simple format how to care for the earth with a number of activities for understanding concepts such as acid rain.

The Greening Book - Being a Friend to the Earth by Ellen Sabin
A book full of hands on activities and ideas on how you can be a friend to our environment.

Wangari's Trees of Peace, A true story by Jeanette Winter
As a young girl in Kenya, Wangari Maathai is surrounded by a rich, beautiful forest of trees. As she sees the trees being cut down she is afraid that soon all these forests will be destroyed. She decides to plant nine seedlings and as they grow, so do her plans... "People are fighting over water, over food...we plant the seeds of peace."

Preflection
After you read one of the suggested books or Fact Sheets to your children and before you do the project, you can use the following questions to talk about environmental issues.  Discussing the issue is the key to helping your children develop empathy and compassion for the people affected by the community or world issue they are addressing.

1. How often do you throw away something that might be of use to another person?  Can you think of two things you usually throw away that you could start saving to give away, or recycling?  How would this help the environment?
2. What is your favorite thing about nature? Do you enjoy walking in the woods? Climbing trees? Swimming in lakes or the ocean?
3. What are more ways in which you think you could get your neighbors, classmates, or other community members to help the environment with you?  How could you make helping the environment seem easy and fun?  Do you want to ...
   • Pick up garbage in a park, on the street, or on the beach (with safety precautions)?
   • Have a recycling competition to see who can most reduce the amount of garbage they throw away each week?
   • Carpool to and from activities, sports or clubs that you are involved in, to reduce pollution?

Reflection
After your volunteer project, it is important for families to reflect on their experiences.  Choose one of the Reflection Activities from the list below.

Magic Wand – This activity uses the concept of a magic wand to help children talk about and reflect on their volunteer experience.  Have your family sit in a circle.  Tell everyone that you have just found a magic wand that allows you to grant wishes, and pose the questions, “If you could grant a wish to one person, who would it be, and what do you think he or she would wish for?”  “How do you think what we did today will make someone feel, and how do you think that is similar to granting a wish?”

Family Pictionary – Have each member of the family take turns drawing something about their volunteer experience and how they felt about it.  While each person is drawing, have everyone else try to guess what the picture represents.  After each picture is drawn, the artist should talk about the picture and why they chose to draw it.