Sunday, April 12, 2015

Kids Having Fun on Dairy Farm in Dubai

A social club in Dubai named Hands on Club who arranges educative and fun activities for kids announced a dairy farm visit few weeks back. How can I miss this kids eco-activity, so me and my son joined many other kids and their moms to visit Marmum Dairy farm situated close to Nad al sheba. We all travelled through mini school buses, we got to spot camels in dessert on the way. All older kids were very curious and had few interesting ideas about cows like 'cows drink milk first before giving us milk' and 'do cows eat chocolates to make chocolate milk?' :-). You could imagine how entertaining it must be to be there with those smart kids!

Marmum farm allowed us in after their routine cleansing procedures. From a viewing gallery we could see automated cow milk extraction procedure. There was a informative presentation arranged for our group by Marmum. Where they explained many facts about cows, dairy farm activities, procedures etc. Older kids were happy to know real answers to their curious questions, but not my toddler. He wanted to 'go out' of that hall and he announced it almost as soon as the presentation started! To avoid disturbing others, me and my son wandered around, the main attraction was calves kept nearby. My son wanted to feed them lot of things like dried leaves and dried sticks of trees. But he understood after I explained that like all other babies calf need milk too, because it is cow's baby. Of course we returned to hall when old MacDonald song started at end of presentation, it is our one of favorite song!

Marmum arranged calf feeding for kids. Kids fed the calves milk through large bottles. It was definitely highlight of the visit. Kids were happy and shouting and gathering around calves. One of the calf set itself free from that cage like shelter and jumped around, it made kids scream even louder and poor calf got scared even more. The farm staff caught the calf and kept in it's safe zone. Many mothers told their kids not to scream and disturb the calf further. I found that incidence educative too, our kids need to make aware that they are disturbing animals in their excitement. Which can irritate those animals and they might harm us (of course not in this situation, the poor calf was frightened and was trying to get away from the crowd).

Marmum provided us with lots and lots of bottles of milk, juices, laban. It was a hot day and cold strawberry milk was much needed for us.

It was a fun filled, educative activity and all kids enjoyed it thoroughly. My son now knows where the milk comes from. And I know many things about a cow which I didn't even given a thought to.


Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Earth Hour 2015 Celebrations!

Green Living in Dubai's first Eco Event took place yesterday. We organized 'Family Fun Earth Hour 2015 celebrations' and I am glad to share with you that it went well :-).
DIY Paper Lantern and Recycled Tin Lantern made by me



John Giving Talk, Paper Lantern making
The theme of our Earth Hour 2015 celebrations was 'Reduce Reuse Recycle'! (You can find more about 3Rs and DIYs on our blog under Green Home section)

Highlight of our celebration was talk about local recycling service. John Van Zuylen from Keep It Clean delivered the informative talk about their recycling system created for every household in UAE, Homecycle. Our guest found it very useful. Guests asked questions about it and even said they will try this service. I talked about my experience as Homecycle user. Check out the review of Homecycle on our blog under Green Directory section


As promised to our guests we had eco activities for kids. Not just kids but even parents and adults liked our eco activities! We made paper lantern with kids. Older kids enjoyed making it on their own. Younger kids enjoyed decorating waste plastic bottles (juice and milk bottles) to make educational toy. I call it 'shapes and color discovery bottle'. This educational bottle toy was created to teach kids how we can reuse items to make something useful out of it instead of throwing it away. Also I displayed and explained how to make lantern out of tin box. The one showed here created out of formula milk tin box.

Shapes and Color Discovery Bottle made out of plastic juice bottle
(Recycled Educational Toy for younger kids)


At end our guest were given eco goodies, consist of paper car bag, Mr. bin paper trash cone for beach by Keep It Clean and Glass jar with goodies by Green Living In Dubai, which I made out of babyfood jars another example of reusing waste bottles.

I would like to thank John and Michelene from Keep It Clean for sparing an evening for our event and providing valuable information about how to recycle in UAE from comfort of our home and giving eco goodies to our guests. And lastly thank you to all of our guests who attended 'Family Fun Earth Hour Celebrations'. I am sure you had fun! All of these lovely people made our first Green Event successful!

Checkout few more photos of the event on our Facebook page. Keep checking our blog for future Eco events...
Kids showing Paper Lantern and Discovery Bottle made by them