kids gardening activities

Posted on | December 19, 2009 | No Comments

kids gardening activities

Show them how much you enjoy gardening. Spend time in your garden. It is especially easy to stimulate a child’s interests when they see you having fun.

Make gardening easy. Don’t expect a perfect garden. Allow your family to work at their own pace and within their attention spans and age range, especially children.

Dig it! Kids love to dig. This is a great way to teach the basics while letting them play and just have fun. 

Let them play an active role in planning. Take your children to the local nursery and let them pick seeds or transplants to start their garden. Take your time and let them browse and enjoy all of the beautiful plants.

Grow a theme garden. This is a great way to let your children use their imagination and express their creativity. The sky is the limit. Some great ideas are gardens that coincide with the holidays, alphabet gardens, a garden themed in their favorite colors, a sensory garden where you can experience different smells, tastes, textures and sights, or a “Freedom Garden”.

Give children their own “kid sized” tools. They don’t have to be expensive. You can go with an old spoon and a bucket that you have around the house or you can venture down to the garden center and purchase garden tools made for children’s hands.

Give them a space to call their own. It doesn’t have to be big. This will teach them ownership and responsibility, and your children will be able to take credit for their own little space.

Get crafty! Press or dry flowers to make a beautiful arrangement, make potpourri, or make a pomander ball. Children love making things and will be amazed at the crafts and gifts that they can make from the garden.

Grow a vegetable garden. Your children will be amazed that they can grow their own food. Be sure to use organic pesticides.

Use gardening to brush up your children’s math and science skills. Let them count the seeds they are planting, or teach them how plants are living things. Not only will you capture their attention, you will be polishing their skills as you go.

Have a contest. Kids love to be rewarded. Be sure to give each child a reward; the biggest tomato, the prettiest flower, or perhaps the best tasting herbs (a little Spray-N-Grow will help!)

Don’t try to do it all! Pick a few of these tips that you know are best for your family and have fun with them. After all, gardening is meant to be fun and easy. And with a little help, something the whole family can enjoy.

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Make Gardening a Family Event

Kids – Pocket Money & Activities?

Please share your experiences, as I’m unsure what do think on this.

Whoa Natalie….
I know how you felt as a child, but you are going to busy your child doing activities and not really giving them you time. I thing that Picking one activity and doing it is great. It gets them out of the house, playing and interacting with others, and let’s you have a break. But, you’ll find as they get older, that you are not going to have the time to be SUPER MOM and you’re going to wind up with kids who MAY (ephasizing what MAY happen) feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and lack connection with you except on an achievement basis with their activities. Busy is not always better.
Now, that said, try to do some activities together. Find out if your local library is planning any parent-child reading sessions together. Look for some mom type play groups in your area, or start one up. Spend some time at home playing board games, coloring, reading, playing with toys together. Go to the park. I know some parks in the summer have boat rides (if they are built around ponds) or train rides. If they don’t, you can still have time running, swinging and playing with your kids.
Now, the pocket money. You should talk about money with your 6 year old, and when you’re in the store you can let him purchase something with a dollar and explaing how change is counted back. Make sure that you instill that he needs to save some and tithe some. You can get jars and label them with save, spend, tithe. I wouldn’t give him a set allowance, but every once in a while (perhaps 1 time a month) you have participate in cleaning with you around the house and reward him with some money and then re-inforce the amount to be saved, the amount to be spent, and the amount to tithe. Allowances and chores can wait until 10, sometimes as early as 8 years old, depends on your child.
Hope all this helps

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