Gardening with Kids

Springtime! We just love the spring time and we are sure you do too.

As Ruth Stout used to say

“I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.”

 The East Coast has been blessed with beautiful spring weather. Being the perfect weather to escort the spring season into our lives we and the kids decided to create and begin to prepare our garden.


This is turning out to be such a wonderful project. We looked around outside and choose a very ugly spot in our yard that does get a great deal of sun and decided that we should plan to create our masterpiece there. For one, it will beautify a not so nice area of our yard and secondly, it will be a great project to continually work on throughout the springtime. We are going to try and document our progress from the uninviting and unsightly area we have chosen to hopefully a very eye pleasing and inviting area we will be really happy with and will hopefully produce vegetables that we will be able to enjoy all summer long.

Now the tricky part, we have to actually do the work. Looking at the area we decided to buy a piece of vinyl lattice. The lattice will then serve for two purposes, to hide an unsightly part of the area and to have something that we can plant growing plants by that will give them something to climb on. We also turned over and tilled the dirt getting out all the rocks, grass and things you just do not want in a garden to hinder the beauty or growth of what we are hoping to accomplish.

                     Q: What does all this hard work have in it for the kids?

                     A: This is fabulous for the kids. There is much to learn in basic  
                          gardening. Kids will utilize their math skills and learn better health
                          habits.

What we plan on learning:

Once we choose what plants we are going to plant in our garden we are going to be discussing the root systems/leaf systems of the plants. They will learn to identify seed and plant parts.

• We will find out and learn how plants have many uses, i.e. food, shelter, clothing, medicines and fuel.
• We will use math in the planning and growing of our garden by using counting, sorting, graphing of course for the plans of the garden as well as the growth of the plants and measuring. The kids will also be using estimating in this project.
• We will use this garden and all the thought and work put into it as a vehicle that will truly encourage the kids to make good food choices, this will d8efinitely be a reintroduction and reinforcement of the food pyramid and healthy life and eating habits.

Find more about Gardening with Kids around the web:
http://gardeninglaunchpad.com/kids.html
http://www.kidsgardening.org/
http://www.danthegardener.co.uk/