Jane Sandwood
Teacher | Blogger | Mom

It’s saddening to see children so hooked on electronic devices that they’d prefer to stay indoors. Apart from always trying to find educational toys for your child, why don’t you give gardening a try? It’s great for the brain, body, and soul, but you also have to strike a balance between making this a fun and safe experience for your child as there are dangers lurking in a garden like poisonous plants.

Your utmost priority will be ensuring that a garden is a safe place for your child to play in. Once you’ve childproofed your garden, it is time to start thinking about ways to capture your child’s interest. At first, your child might think gardening is a boring thing to do, but make it your goal to show your child the importance of gardening and how growing his/her own garden will be beneficial in the long run. To give you a head start, here are gardening tips for moms and kids you can give a try:

Create Your Child’s Own Garden Space

Giving your child his/her own garden space means you’re giving your child the duty to take care of that specific space. For kids, this is a huge deal. From the get-go, they’ll feel a sense of responsibility to take care of their own garden. Once you’ve done that, you can now search for gardening tools designed specifically for kids, such as gloves, spades, and watering cans. Your kids must be able to hold the tools easily as this will encourage them to work on their own garden patch more. Bear in mind that at this point, your child is still assessing if gardening is something fun to do, so you have to show your child just that.

Get the Right Plants for Quicker Results

One of the most important things you should plan is the getting the right plants. What you must realize is that kids are very impatient, and when it comes to gardening, they’ll feel more motivated to work on their veggie patch if they see quick results. That is why you need to plant climate and season appropriate plants. Also, when gardening with kids, keep it realistic. You have to start small with them like maybe planting a tomato in a pot or grow vegetable tops. There are also veggie, herbs, and flower patch kits that are made to be grown easily.

Just Make It Fun

Gardening is a concept that kids will not easily grasp at first until they see how things work. Basically, gardening is all about Science, which is why you have to double the effort in making the activity fun. Start by assigning your child the fun activities like watering the plants, planting, and harvesting. Using a leaf blower is fun for kids, but you have to hold it with them. You can call for your child’s help to clean leaves in the garden too, which is something they’ll really have fun with.

To add more fun, let your child decorate his/her own patch. Your child can decorate with garden pebbles, a scarecrow or even a bird feeder. This gives your child a sense of freedom to do what he or she wants with the garden space.

Of course, the ultimate goal will make it both a fun and successful activity at the same time. However, it can’t all be successes. You also have to teach your child about gardening loses like when a plant dies or when a seed won’t germinate and grow. It may be a disappointing experience, but your child will learn to try again and again.

Gardening is an excellent way to bond with your child. This outdoor activity will teach them to care for the environment, be more inclined to eat fruits and vegetables when they grow up, and improve on intersocial relationships with the people around them. There’s no better time to introduce gardening to your child than now.

About Jane Sandwood

Jane has been a freelance writer and editor for over 10 years. She has written for both digital and print across a wide variety of fields. Her main interest is exploring how people can improve their health and well being in their everyday life. And when she isn’t writing, Jane can often be found with her nose in a good book, at the gym or just spending quality time with her family.

View all posts by Jane Sandwood here.

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