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Philosophy
In 2010, our proprietor Lisa Boni began an action research study on the subject of the restorative effects of natural environments on children’s health and wellbeing. This research led Lisa to devote her time to reviewing literature on the topic, and ultimately to writing her master’s thesis on the subject of advocating for children’s right to freely experience green settings. Below you will find various resources for parents centered around our philosophy here at Little Tot's.
a little green school...
Indoor Air Quality
Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners
Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners
1. We vacuum every day.
2. We do not use chemical-based aerosol sprays for room freshening. We use only fresh air, natural orange peel spray, and essential oils.
3. We do not allow any smoking in our house.
4. We use a 90% efficiency furnace that continually pulls fresh air from the outdoors. Our furnace has a second heat exchanger which supplements the primary heat and saves energy.
5. We keep our home dry with a humidity control sensor on our furnace.
6. We change our furnace filter once every four months.
Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners
Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners
Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners
We believe that home should be the safest place in the whole world. And, that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice powerful convictions for powerful cleaners.
7. When children are present, we use all-natural cleaners such as Shaklee Get Clean products. Many years ago, I learned that most of the products meant to ‘clean’ our homes actually contain alarming amounts of poisons. Poisons that cause immediate harm, and ones that can cause ailments such as asthma, cancer, and emphysema. According to the national organization, Safe Kids USA, there are more than 1.2 million unintentional poisonings per year of kids under five years old. Shaklee Get Clean products contain natural biodegradable cleaning agents. They also have no phosphates, borates, nitrates, or other stuff the planet doesn’t appreciate.
Only for sanitation reasons do we use any other cleaning agents and we are very careful that children are not exposed to any fumes or wet surfaces when we do so.
We Eat Healthy!
We Eat Healthy!
We Eat Healthy!
8. Each day we choose healthy meals for the children. We eat many fresh fruits and locally grown vegetables while limiting refined sugars, processed meats, and prepackaged foods. Thanks to our teachers’ great cooking skills, we are able to pre-plan and prepare several homemade meals each week.
9. In 2011, Mr. Lou created a children’s garden! He built a special place just for little green thumbs. Having a garden has been phenomenal! The children have planted many yummy vegetables, including tomatoes, corn, lettuce, green peppers, peas, carrots, sunflowers, broccoli and cauliflower. We also have grown our very own watermelon! Gardening has been a wonderful introduction into the world of fresh food! Because the children grow the food they take special interest in trying all of the food too. The most satisfying part of the whole process is watching the children devour all the grape tomatoes they can during outdoor free time every afternoon!
We Recycle
We Eat Healthy!
We Eat Healthy!
10. Here at Little Tot’s we recycle Glass, Aluminum and other Metals, Paper, Plastic and Print Cartridges. 11. We purchase items in bulk to cut down on packaging. 12. We reuse and up-cycle as many items as we can through art projects, class activities and storage (plastic snack containers make great classroom material holders).
13. We donate to charity any toys, supplies, clothing or materials that we no longer are using or need in our classroom.