Kids Care Clubs
National Park and Recreation Month
Clean Up!
Calendar Project
Celebrate National Park and Recreation Month by helping to keep our parks clean. Parks, including playgrounds, rivers, lakes, forests, beaches, as well as national and neighborhood parks, are important to our environment and to our physical and mental health. Everyone needs a beautiful, safe and clean place where they can relax or play.
The National Recreation and Park Association recognizes the health benefits for adults and for children. They state that "playing in parks helps children maintain healthy bones and muscles and improves self-esteem."
The National Park Service (NPS) helps youth get involved in our National Park System through the 25 youth programs they offer. Their goal is to help youth develop a life-long commitment to support our parks and protect our natural environment.
Parks, local and national, depend on dedicated employees as well as volunteers to create and maintain them. Your club can help keep our parks clean by organizing a Kids Care Clubs National Park and Recreation Month Clean Up!
Materials Involved:
Trash bags
Gloves to protect hands from sharp objects
Rakes and other tools depending on the project
Steps Involved:
River Clean Up - A True Story!
Read below what the Gaston County 4-H Explorers KCC found when they did a local river clean up.
When The Gaston County 4-H Explorers Kids Care Club cleaned up an area of a local river they filled a truck with 40 bags of trash! The trash included:
They separated all the recyclables and hazardous waste materials before were they brought it to the Gaston County Landfill for processing. More that 80% of the garbage collected was recycled.
In 
addition, the Club placed labels on storm drains in an effort to educate the public on the importance of protecting our waterways. They learned that whatever goes into a storm drain winds up in our local waterways and that this "Non-Point Source Pollution" is the largest threat to our waterways today.
To educate residents, the Club also placed door hangers on houses listing ways they can help prevent pollution from entering the storm drains.
Beach Sweep
The Califon Kids Care Club in Califon, NJ collected plastic bottle caps in conjunction with the Clean Ocean Action and Aveda initiative to keep our beaches clean and recycle bottle caps into new bottle caps. (During plastic bottle recycling, if the plastic lid does not pop off, the entire bottle cannot be recycled). In 2009 Clean Ocean Action listed plastic bottle caps, as the number one pollutant on New Jersey beaches. In 2008, during two days of beach sweeps, 33,000 plastic caps and lids were collected. Bottle caps as well as other plastic wrappers are hazardous to marine life.
See Kids Care Clubs Earth Day - Everyday! for more project ideas on protecting our environment.
Internet Resources
for Kids - National Park Service WebRangers - over 50 interactive games for kids to learn about their national parks.
National Recreation and Park Association
Keep America Beautiful Kids Zone
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