There are some areas of my life that I find very difficult to make green: I have terrible allergies, and my attempt at line drying our clothes last year was a complete failure and I’m having a difficult time teaching my 2-year-old to conserve energy (electricity, not his own.)

Some of his favorite activities include turning our bedroom light on and off, opening the fridge and staring at the contents (then demanding yogurt, but that’s not really a green problem) and wanting the television to be on even when he is not watching it.

Reasoning with him that turning on a light when the sunshine lights the room better is just not working. And if I turn the light off, he thinks it’s a really fun game of On/Off. The good news is that he has the concepts of on/off and open/shut down pat.

Now that the weather is finally warming up, I am able to steer him away from the TV with the lure of the outdoors. But I know rainy days will happen.

I’ve found several articles on how now is a great time to teach my son about gardening, recycling and re-using (he inherently knows how to re-use and re-imagine), but I didn’t find anything very helpful about teaching energy conservation to a toddler.

Any advice on teaching energy conservation to a very playful 2-year-old?