Table of Contents
- Teach Kids About Gardening: The Benefits
- 6 Tips to Inspire and Teach Kids About Gardening
- Teach Kids About Gardening: More Ideas for Kids
- Teach Kids About Gardening – The Wrap-up
- FAQ
Gardening is a great way to introduce children to nature! This article will help you teach kids about gardening. We’ll provide you with tips on engaging your child in their new activity while providing gardening ideas for kids to ensure they remain interested.
Indoor gardening activities are a great way to keep children occupied while encouraging them to learn about plants and biology. Children have an innate desire to learn, and they love to experiment, use their own hands to create, and watch the objects around them change and grow along with them.
Teach Kids About Gardening: The Benefits
Before getting into the tips and gardening ideas for kids, knowing the benefits of having your child engage in gardening activities is worthwhile. When children garden, they create a lifelong hobby while making them healthier by improving their immune system from exposing them to dirt or soil while also improving their fine motor skills. Letting your child create an indoor kid’s garden helps teach responsibility as they have to help care for a living thing to ensure it thrives and remains beautiful.
Children love watching new life spring from a seed, and kids like getting a little messy too! Gardening with your child is ideal for teaching them to respect nature. So, get ready to break out the seeds and gardening gloves and spend some time together creating an indoor garden space!
6 Tips to Inspire and Teach Kids About Gardening
1. Make Checking the Plant a Routine
Consistency is essential in keeping a child interested in a hobby. Find 5 minutes a day to check on the plants with your child. Observe how much they’ve grown and how they’ve changed. Use the time to harvest any food that your plant may have produced. Encourage your child to take photos to document the changes in the plants and reflect on those images during the plant’s life cycle.
2. Show Kids How to Begin
Seed starting is a great small motor sensory project for toddlers and young school-age children. Teach them how to make small seed-starting pots, or use peat pods, or even upcycle ice cube trays. Show them how to moisten the soil and place 2-3 seeds per space. It may take 5-10 days for some seedlings to sprout, but waiting for it to happen and watching the growth is exciting for budding gardeners.
3. Allow for Easy Access to the Indoor Garden
The garden doesn’t need to be an off-limits space (if they understand the basic concepts). Make it easy for them to enter so they can explore independently. Also, consider strategically placing indoor steppingstones or tape on the floor so they can navigate the room without disrupting the plants.
4. Teach Kids About Gardening Tools
Age-appropriate tools for tiny gardeners make gardening a little more intriguing and personalized for your child. You’ll be able to find the necessary tools at your local garden center, and your child will jump at the opportunity to help you maintain your indoor garden with their special tools.
5. Allow Your Child to Pick The Plant
Take the time to show them what will thrive best in your home’s environment, and don’t be too surprised if all of their picks have blooms matching their favorite color. Let your child initiate care for these plants (monitor and guide when needed). The more hands-on you allow them to be, the more they’ll want to learn and explore this new hobby of theirs.
6. Place a Plant Near Where Your Child Plays
Placing a flower that they like nearby makes it easy for your child to monitor its growth, making them more interested in the process.
Teach Kids About Gardening: More Ideas for Kids
Participating in gardening activities is a great way to keep your child inspired while learning their new hobby! The following information are activities to ensure your child’s success and interest in gardening!
Grow Plants from Food in Your Kitchen
Growing your plants from food in the kitchen is a great way to help kids understand where the food they consume comes from and how it flourishes.
An activity to do with your child is to find out what seeds will sprout by putting them on moist kitchen paper at the bottom of a shallow plastic tray. You can try lentils, beans, and brown rice, as well as seeds you may have in the kitchen, such as poppy seeds, mustard seeds, or pumpkin seeds. Once the seeds start to germinate, you can transfer them into a jam jar or small pot to allow them to grow. Make sure the roots are well covered in soil and kept moist. Encourage your child to check back on them every day and water them if the potting soil feels dry. Another great one to do at home is to cut the tops of carrots and parsnips and place them in a shallow bowl of water. Keep them on a windowsill, and they should sprout after a few days!
Decorate Your Plant Pots
Inspire your child even further by incorporating art into their gardening by creating fun designs for their very own plant pots. All you need are a few terracotta pots of varying sizes, some emulsion paint in a selection of colors, and a handful of paintbrushes, and you’re ready to go. It’s generally better to use water-based emulsion as it dries quickly and is much easier to clean up. It’s likely to be a messy job, so put down plenty of newspapers and make sure your child has on clothes that you wouldn’t mind getting dirty.
First, they’ll need to paint the pots with a base layer of emulsion paint. They don’t have to paint the bottom or inside, but they can if they wish. Once the base layer has dried, they can design the pots however they like – let them do as much or as little as they like. Your child is sure to love this gardening activity.
Another great activity to go along with this is rock painting. It allows your child to decorate rocks to match their pot and then place the gardening rocks on top of the soil. These activities allow your child to get in touch with their creative side and customize their indoor garden to their liking.
Teach Kids About Gardening Using an Eggshell Countertop Garden
This one is an easy and fun gardening idea for kids. A majority of the supplies you likely already have right in your kitchen. All you’ll need for this project is a few egg cartons, clean eggshells, soil, spoons, seeds, and markers or pens. If you want to get fancy with your eggshells, then grab some googly eyes, gems, or glitter to decorate them. You can use any seed for this, but herbs tend to be the easiest to use for this project as a beginner.
Toilet Paper Tube Seed Starter
Use your empty toilet paper tubes as seed starters. Make four cuts at the bottom of the tube, about an inch each, and fold the pieces under the tube to create a base. Fill these with soil, add a seed or two, and spritz with water. You’ll need to transplant these into pots soon after making since the tubes will get wet and may break with watering.
Teach Kids About Gardening – The Wrap-up
There are many tips and gardening ideas for kids. Whether your child wants to be more on the art side of gardening, or if they need to get their hands dirty, there is always an activity for your child and several tips on keeping them interested in gardening. Be consistent, and allow your child to take the lead, and your child is sure to keep this as a long-lasting hobby!
FAQ
Herbs, tomatoes, and peppers are very easy for children to learn to grow when just getting started with gardening.
Scientists have discovered that the mycobacterium in potting soil can improve brain functions while boosting your child’s mood. The mycobacterium vaccae found in the soil increases serotonin produced in the brain (also known as the “happy” chemical). By getting your hands dirty, you’re also making your brain happy! Gardening activities give children a sense of purpose and responsibility. Furthermore, studies show that when children interact with gardening soil during activities like digging and planting, they have improved moods, better learning experiences, and decreased anxiety.
Children can learn new skills, have fun, play, and develop self-confidence by spending time tending plants and growing their food in the garden. Most children enjoy digging in the soil, getting dirty, creating things, and watching plants grow.
Gardening provides a great introduction to the environment around them. Children can learn about many different flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Being able to physically feel them in their own hands and even smell them will allow them to trigger all the senses. This sensory introduction is concrete and solid and will leave them feeling good.
Gardening with children provides them with skills to help your child’s development. For example, gardening is a great physical development activity. Young children can practice locomotor skills, body management skills, and object control skills while moving from one place to the other with tools, soil, and water.
