This lovely post was submitted by Ibrahim Kareem.
Having a garden in your home can be an extremely peaceful experience. There’s nothing like listening to the birds sing and watching bees pollinate flowers. Even in small homes, having an indoor plant garden can bring a lot of joy – especially if you’ve always wanted one.
And when you have children of your own, it’s only natural that you want to pass on the love for plants and nature to them Having gardening supplies for them to help you and allowing them to explore can help to develop a love for everything green.
Get Gardening Supplies
Don’t forget to treat your children their own gardening tools so they can help you and feel productive. Get them their own gloves to protect their hands and gardening supplies with dull ends so they don’t hurt themselves. Other tools like a trowel, a rake, and a spade can really help them to feel like they’re understanding the basics of gardening and like they’re more independent.
And these gardening supplies will be useful for when you give them their little corner of soil, helping them to become budding gardeners who love to plant vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
Let Your Little Ones Explore
Children tend to love playing in dirt, so let them get dirty and understand how soil works. Set aside clothes for gardening time and let them explore what your garden has to offer. Keeping children interested might seem difficult; gardening is, after all, a hobby of waiting and having patience.
Keep them engaged by giving them small tasks:
- Your children can make plant labels to organise what has been planted in the garden
- Encourage them to go on a hunt for minibeasts like worms and insects
- Teach them to handle these insects carefully and gently
- Explain how each insect is helpful for the garden
- Let them ask questions and suggest activities
Use Fresh Ingredients for Meals
Starting by using vegetables, fruits, and herbs from your garden can be a great way to pique your children’s interest. Gardening and cooking go hand in hand, transmitting a sense of pride when the plants they helped to grow are used to cook family meals.
Let them take in the scents of each ingredient, how they smell and taste different to one another, and introduce different varieties in your cooking so they understand yield seasons and how each variety has a different taste.
Read Books About Gardening
Gardening books are great resources to explain which insects are typically found in the garden and which plants attract them. It’s also good to give an overview on beneficial insects and how they help to both pollinate and to keep pests at bay.
Knowing beforehand what they will encounter in the garden and having a basic vocabulary gives them confidence. They will feel like they already have a head start on what the garden has to offer.
Let Them Have a Say
Instead of keeping to a teaching schedule, let your children suggest what to do or plant in the garden. Give them their own areas, or plant pots, so they can experiment and plant what they want. That small green space will be their responsibility to maintain, which will help them to become more invested in gardening.
Additionally, take them to buy seeds for your next project. You can easily turn it into a fun scientific experiment. Let them plant beans in a clear cup so they watch the roots grow. This will provide them with a greater understanding of a plant’s lifecycle and what plants need to survive from the first day.
Teaching children to be patient and to find love in gardening is a very rewarding activity for you, for your children, and for the planet. Create memories that your children will cherish forever and give them skills that they will pass down to their own children.