Activities for the classroom and the home

International Buy Nothing Day always falls on the day after the American Thanksgiving in November, traditionally the first day of Christmas shopping in the U.S. People are encouraged to not make any purchases throughout the entire day. The idea is to increase participants' awareness of their spending habits and to think about mass consumerism and its effect on the cultural and natural environment of the world.

Here are some questions to explore with your kids and students:

• Do you think that we buy more things than we really need each day? Make a list of things which your family would normally spend money on each day, i.e. food, gas, bus fare, clothing etc.
• Do think your family could go for a whole day without spending any money?
• Discuss the relevance of discouraging consumerism when we live in a capitalist country. Would it be more appropriate to celebrate Buy Nothing Day by encouraging citizens to buy from local businesses rather than from stores owned by large multinational corporations?
• Look at your spending habits over the course of a month and see where most of your money goes. Do you attempt to budget your money?
• Talk about how our culture has changed from one where people had to grow their food, build their own homes and make their own clothing to one where we pay money for all those things. What things would the early pioneers have had to buy which they couldn't supply themselves - i.e. flour, cloth for clothing, china, pots and pans etc.?
• Why do we, as a culture, feel compelled to buy things we don't need for survival?
• Do you think commercials and advertisements makes us feel we need things when we really don't?
• Can you think of reasons why buying things could be necessary for our society? Does it help the economy? Does it hurt the environment?

Activities:

• Visit a pioneer village or a museum. Discuss how we have moved from being a rural population to an urban one and what repercussions this change has had on society and the environment.
• Have your kids make something from scratch - something they would normally buy, i.e. a loaf of bread, Christmas presents, etc.
• Have your kids to write a story or play around the theme of consumerism and youth.
• Create a "Buy Nothing Day" celebration at your school - hold a poster contest or a competition to see which class can come up with the best idea for promoting non-consumerism in your community.