Gardening with kids is a great way to incorporate academic and social learning in the outdoors, but like all great activities, it is important to make a plan. Here’s how to make a garden plan with kids.
Today we have a guest post from MaryAnne about making a garden plan with your children. MaryAnne is an amazingly talented women, master teacher, mom to four kiddos, and author of MamaSmiles. Her blog is a fantastic resource for learning, parenting, and crafting. If you haven’t read any of the articles in the Exploring Geography Section, then I strongly suggest you do today!
Gardening with kids is one of my favorite springtime family activities! Making a garden plan with kids is a great way to get them involved from the very beginning, which in turn helps them feel that they have full ownership in the project! You can join in our month long Gardening with Kids; Learning and Growing celebrations by sharing pictures of YOU gardening with your children using the hashtag #plantaseed.
How to make a garden plan with kids
With a little bit of thought, making a garden plan with your kids can be a fun family afternoon activity that you will all enjoy! There are so many ways to get kids involved at this stage:
- Decide where you will plant your garden. If you don’t have a garden space set up already, let the kids help you decide where to make your garden. Be sure to talk to them about the benefits of planting in an area with full sun, full shade, or a mix of sun and shade.
- Give your child a piece of the garden to tend. Mark off a part of the garden that your child can look after – and then let them decide what they want to plant there. Let them be in charge of watering and weeding their portion of the garden.
- Let your child help you pick seeds for your garden. Take them to the store with you, or let them help you choose seeds from a seed catalog. Or let them help you make a list before you go to the store.
- Make sure your child has gardening tools. My kids love having their own shovels and rakes – and it definitely makes them more motivated to help weed the garden!
- Be sure to pick a few child-friendly plants. My kids love tomatoes and peas, as well as pretty flowers. Berry bushes are also popular with my kids, although sometimes you have to wait a year to get many berries to eat.
As kids feel involved with the garden planting process, they will learn to love the process of growing vegetables and fruit, and chances are they will eat the vegetables they planted with much greater enthusiasm than they eat food from the grocery store!
MaryAnne lives in Silicon Valley, California with her husband and four children, aged 8, 6, 4, and 18 months. Her blog, Mama Smiles – Joyful Parenting is about celebrating joy in everyday parenting through creativity, learning, and play.
Thank you so much MaryAnne for sharing these great gardening ideas. For more of MaryAnne’s Gardening articles, visit her at Mama Smiles!
You may also enjoy these gardening activities for kids…
I can't wait to get into the school garden with my students. What to plant this year???
Mia, that is awesome =) What are you growing this year?
My kids also like planting herbs and they are super easy to grow! I think kids love the planning and anticipation part too though I usually am not organized enough to include them!
Thank you so very much Maryanne for sharing these helpful tips with us, I tend to wing it more than plan, so will be trying out your suggestions this season!
Thanks for stopping by, my kids really enjoy the dirt too. BUT they don't limit the mess to their hands! They even have a special place in our backyard that they have designated their "mud bath" complete with dirt shampoo. In my next house, I really would like a mud room to shower them off,
That is exciting!!!!! Good luck on you our adventures!
We are excited to start our first garden adventure this year! Thanks for the tips.
My son loves to get his hands in the dirt. I really enjoyed this post.
Thanks for having me as a guest on your blog! My kids and I love gardening, and we are looking forward to reading the rest of the posts for this series!