Even if your children spend most of their time on the allotment, you probably don’t know what they usually do. Parents will often stay out of it as long as the kids are having fun. Besides, finding activities to keep your children occupied during summer could prove challenging.
As such, you might be wondering why you should get your kids into gardening. Every child should participate in some gardening activity. However, getting them interested might not be easy even though the garden is a great playground.
Your kids will love gardening, albeit in short bursts. Letting your children assist and giving them the opportunity to get their hands dirty is a great way to spend quality time with them. It also helps to ensure they are off the sofa, out of the house and doing something meaningful. In fact, it’s hard to think of a reason why kids shouldn’t start gardening.
Watching seeds germinate or creating their own plot helps them develop a set of skills and love for the outside world. They will also learn about plant life, sharing and working together.
Apart from helping to ensure your kids embrace nature, gardening helps them understand we’re simply part of a larger ecosystem, one that we need to nurture and protect. This activity is humbling, captivating, and above all educational. Here’s a list of ideas to help get your kids into gardening this summer even if they have never sown a seed or shown anything more than a cursory interest.
Assist them to develop their own patch
If you have enough garden space, carve out a small area for your kids. Make sure they understand the patch is for their use, which means they are welcome to play there if that’s what they want to do.
Since the summer period isn’t too late for a great gardening project, you can plant a wide variety of vegetables and flowers. Encourage the young ones to sow fast-growing plants like French beans, lamb’s lettuce, snow peas, Dahlia and marigold. Let the older ones, particularly those who know growing takes time, help you with autumn and winter harvest plants like cabbages and cauliflowers. Imagine the thrill your kids will get when their flowers start to bloom or when they harvest and eat crops that they helped grow.
Encourage them to monitor the garden
As living spaces, gardens are always changing. As a matter of fact, gardens can be a constant source of new, fascinating, and educational information. Children will find it exciting to see and learn how nature causes things to change over time, and this will be much easier if they develop their own patch.
Get your kids to go outside on given days of the week to see and know the changes that can occur to different plants within a period. For example, they can measure how tall the plants have grown or count the fruits on trees. Showing them the correlation between plants and animals is likely to arouse even more interest in gardening. The more ambitious ones will probably find it compelling to see how bird and insect populations relate to changes in plant life. The possibilities and learning opportunities are endless.
Conduct regular insect hunts
Kids tend to love insects, including those an adult would consider creepy. As such, you’re most certainly going to attract interest if you suggest an insect hunt. Send your children out into the garden equipped with containers to collect the insects. Ask them to collect as many as they can. Aside from keeping your kids happily occupied, such activities can help you get rid of pests.
You can make things more interesting by varying the theme. For instance, you can make it about getting as many insects as possible or collecting the most varieties. You can also pick between a general and specific insect hunt. Regardless of the theme, you’ll want to teach your children how to identify different species and what each type of insect will develop into.
Go on garden picnics with your kids
Same as everyone else, you probably love picnics. Even so, you don’t have to trek all the way to the park or take a long drive into the country to have a picnic, unless you don’t have a garden or space for one. But if you do, you can always have a picnic in your own yard.
All you need to do is get the appropriate goodies from your kitchen and spread a blanket on the lawn. To add interest, encourage your children to combine their creative and decorative skills with gardening. Get them to do an arts and crafts project aimed at revamping the aesthetic value of your garden. For example, they can use their artistic imagination to transform plain planters into beautiful pieces of art.
For the much younger kids, choosing projects that are not too involving might be a good idea. You can get them to collect petals and leaves from the garden and then teach them how to make indoor flower decorations.
Make garden accessories together
Although this project might suit the slightly older kids better than their younger counterparts, you can arouse their interest in gardening by helping them make garden accessories. While there are so many projects to choose from, you probably have what you’ll need for most of these projects in your shed. For example, you can make a scarecrow of some sort together. All you need is twine and silver paper. Tie the line between several stakes and dangle the silver paper from it.
If you are a little bit more ambitious, you and your kid can try to make a do-it-yourself planting box or a small gardening tool set. Your child will love having his/her own version of the essential gardening tools.
Let them pick vegetables for dinner
Sending your children into the garden to pick what you’ll eat for dinner helps to get them involved with gardening, particularly if they helped grow the crop. If you let them choose and help prepare the fruits and vegetables, they will learn how to pick, combine, and prepare these ingredients.
A note of caution:
Although you want your children to enjoy gardening, it’s good to remember that there are risks involved. In addition to keeping them away from gardening chemicals and poisonous plants, make sure you teach them how to handle garden tools.
