Gardening With Toddlers
What’s in our garden, how do we get children interested in gardening and what are the benefits of gardening? We cover all those questions and more.
We chose our gardening activity to coincide with our “Empowering Our youth” Indigenous program with Uncle Allan.
Our Topic focus was Bush Tucker…..so we planted our own Bush Tucker Garden.
Uncle Allen is a traditional elder that visits with us every few weeks.
We work closely with Uncle Allen in educating our children about Indigenous culture.
What’s in our Garden?
During Uncle Allen’s last visit, he bought along a native mint plant, lemon myrtle tree and some finger limes.
The children had the chance to smell, taste and feel the trees & fruit.
Extended Activity
To extend on Uncle Allen’s Native bush tucker teachings-We ventured outside into the environmental yard to have a planting day!
In our mud pit, we emptied a few bags of soil, some spades and planter pots
The children were encouraged to find a pot and a shovel to begin the process of filling the pot with the soil.
Once the children were satisfied with the amount of soil added, they made their way over to add some seeds.
We decided on Australian native flowers.
We discussed how we need to look after our new seedlings, and what they need to grow strong.
The pots will be added to our bush tucker garden, and we are very excited to care for them and watch them bloom!
Benefits
Here are a few of the educational benefits children can gain from gardening-
- Being active and present– experiencing and enjoying mother nature
- Nutrition– Knowledge about where their food comes from & the importance of healthy eating
- Responsibility– Learning patience to care for their plants and vegetables.
- Understanding– The process of cause and effect (if we do not water our plants they will die)
- Self-confidence– Achieving goals of caring for plants.
- Reasoning and discovery– Learning about plants, insects, and the environment.
“Play in the dirt, life is too short to always have clean fingernails”.
Here are 7 tips to encourage your children to get involved in the garden;
- Allow them to water the plants daily- Kids love water!
- Get them their own supplies- Shovel, gloves, watering can
- Create a fairy garden
- Make garden maintenance a social activity- Spend time with the family cleaning the yard
- Plant flowers that attract butterflies, ladybirds and other interesting birds or insects
- Create a worm farm
- Let children choose their own vegetables or fruit to grow
And lastly, but most importantly….Let them get dirty!
Teaching kids to garden is an awesome life skill, that is slowly being forgotten in our busy schedules.
That is all from us this month, Miss Lauren, Miss Ruby & the dolphins!
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