6 Reasons To Get Your Children Involved In Gardening
April 8, 2008 by Linette Gerlach
Filed under Gardening with Kids
Why should you get your children involved in gardening? Here are some reasons I came up with, please feel free to add your own in the comment section.
1. Gardening is a great outdoor hobby for children, they have plenty of indoor hobbies (watching TV, playing video games Ugh!). Get them outside in the fresh air digging in your garden.
2. Gardening is an excellent learning experience for children. There is so much science your children can learn just from hanging out with you in the garden. Your children can watch as a tiny seed turns into a beautiful flower. You can show them how the banana peel they discarded can turn into nutrient rich soil to help plants grow.
3. Gardening together as a family is a great family bonding time. You can talk about friends, school, family matters, or just how beautiful that hibiscus bloom is. Family bonding over blooms!
4. You can always use an extra pair of hands in the garden. An extra weeder never hurts.
5. It’s a great way to teach responsibility. Give them a section of the garden to call their own. Help them when they need it, but let them do the work so they can show off “their garden” to family and friends.
6. It teaches them to love and respect nature. Speaking from experience, when they’re older they’ll never forget that. If we want a greener world, more people need to learn to respect Mother Earth.
What are some other reasons to get children involved in the garden?
Images: (c) Linette Gerlach
Multi-generational connections. My father and I shared a passion for gardening. He passed away 2 summers ago and my daughters (7 & 9) are planning a grandpa garden with some of his favorite flowers.
That’s the not way I remember it – I thought it was mostly the reason I couldn’t go out to play. Quite a bit of the time it felt like torture.
Though now that I’m 34, I see the value in it and am happy for the knowledge.
Stop by Blog Fabulous tomorrow as I explain how I plan to torture my own kids with gardening as a hobby/stop-gap measure to lower the grocery bill.