You can do right by your favorite people on their most special day and still be eco-friendly. In her new book, Green Kids, Sage Families, Lynda Fassa, environmentalist, organic cotton clothing designer and mom of three, shows us how.

Parties by their very nature are incredibly wasteful. The wrapping paper alone is an exercise in crazed consumption. You do not have to succumb to the urge to throw money at the same Build-A-Bear, Chuck E. Cheese or arcade game room that everyone is opting for. When you control the environment, it’s easier to keep it green. Plus, from a kid standpoint, there is actually nothing more memorable than a party in your own backyard, kitchen, rec room or garage. Here are a few of my favorite themes for at-home birthday parties, along with the things you’ll need to make them a huge hit.

1. A pirate’s life for you
Who doesn’t love swashbucklin’? Everyone loves the promise of buried treasure. This is a great party theme for kids of either gender, and it’s fun for the littlest ones to around age 10. Here are some ideas, but use your imagination and I bet you’ll come up with even more:

1. In lieu of goody bags, tie up “treasure” in bandannas.
2. For a cool craft, have the kids make their own eye patches out of black felt and black elastic.
3. Paint “tattoos” with nontoxic face paint.

What you’ll need
•A backyard or access to a park
•Pirate’s Booty snacks (from Robert’s American Gourmet) or Natural Cheetos or organic chips
•Stuff for a treasure hunt (colored pencils, wooden tops, a bag of pennies for the ultimate find)

2. Crafting the perfect party
A “make ’n’ take” craft can do double duty as a fun party activity and an impressive take-home gift (nixing the need for the standard junk-filled goody bag).

How about a living garden, like an easy-to-grow sunflower in a pot? Provide organic potting mix and let the kids decorate the pots with a good nontoxic craft glue like Aleene’s and old buttons or dried peas and beans.

What you’ll need
• Easy-grow seeds such as morning glories, sunflowers or a butterfly mix
• Organic potting-soil mix
• Small ceramic pots
• Mixed notions such as buttons, ribbons, coins, nuts and bolts—whatever you have around that you think might look good
• Craft glue or, if an adult will be helping, a craft glue gun (watch it, though—the glue gets HOT!)

3. Green Olympics
If you want to get them running around outside, then this is the theme for you. Have a beanbag toss where guests make their own beanbags out of socks and dry rice. Three-legged races and sack races (you can use old pillowcases) are always a huge laugh, as are spoon-and-egg races. Here’s another old favorite, the shoe race: Have all the kids take off their shoes and put them in a big pile. A member of each team runs to the pile, finds and puts on his or her shoes, and runs back to tag the next person.

What you’ll need
• Clean socks (finally a use for all those single socks!)
• A big bag of dry rice or peas, lentils, etc.
• Laundry baskets or coffee cans (the older the kids, the smaller the targets can be)
• Pillowcases or burlap sacks for the sack race
• Tablespoons and eggs (hard-boil them first if you want to avoid a mess, though for some people that’s the whole point!)

Remember, kids love games, regardless of where you hold the party or what your theme is. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Tried-and-true classics like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Hot Potato and Duck Duck Goose let kids be their exuberant selves, and they can easily be tweaked to fit your theme.

Adapted from Green Kids, Sage Families: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Your Organic Kids, by Lynda Fassa. Copyright © 2009. By permission of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group, New York.