Eco-Friendly and Educational Inauguration Activities to Do with Your Kids

You and your kiddos have some green Obama souvenirs, right? Well, even if you don’t (and even though my four-year-old voted for McCain), there are some fun, educational, and eco-friendly ways to help your kids celebrate our upcoming inauguration–by celebrating this inauguration, in particular, but any inauguration, you help your kids understand the ceremonies that are meaningful to our society and help give them a sense of history and their particular place in it. By making your celebrations thrifty and eco-friendly, you help them learn how to live full and generous lives while honoring your family’s ethical beliefs.

Some of these activities below will require a little prep time and some won’t, but all can be participated in by kids from very young to very old:

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1.  Make a recipe from Obama’s Inauguration Day lunch. This menu, created by Design Cuisine from Arlington, Virginia, is a tribute to Abraham Lincoln. Some of the courses are a little complicated (obviously), but the molasses-whipped sweet potatoes look easy enough and are vegetarian-friendly.
2. Kaboose offers an easy tutorial for painting the Obama symbol on a plain white paper plate–the result is bright and cheerful and the symbol is simple and fun, but I’d suggest subbing some nice recycled cardboard (pizza box? cereal box?) for the paper plate. Or you could paint the American flag instead. Paint a bunch, and you could make a garland.
3. An inauguration of a new administration always involves a lot of deep thinking about what we’d like for ourselves, our country, and our world in the future. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, through January 19, invites children to email them with their hopes for the future (check out their site for the email address). They claim that after the election all children’s letters and emails will be compiled and sent to President Obama himself.
4. Coloring pages, while not masterpieces of creativity, are useful in teaching children recognition of people and symbols. SparkPlugging offers several printable inauguration coloring pages, featuring simple outlines of Obama and his symbol, and a Google Image search will turn up several more for you–print these on the back sides of used typing paper.
5. If your kids are really into it, Our White House has some frankly hard-core educational inaugural activities for kids–they provide on-line links for looking at past inauguration parade floats, inauguration artwork, and inauguration artifacts; encourage them to read and think about the poems that presidents have had read at their inaugurations; give an on-line link to a video tour of the Oval Office; and offer suggestions about games to play at a children’s inauguration party.

What will you and your kids do to celebrate the inauguration?

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