Hi! I’m Sarah Mueller from Early Bird Mom and today I’m going to be sharing with you 20 Reasons to Garden with Your Kids Even If You’re a Beginner.
Do you have a garden? We started one this year and it’s been quite a learning experience. The best part about gardening (besides eating bushels of juicy tomatoes) has been spending the time working outside alongside my kids.
My 2 youngest boys (ages 4 and 8) are especially fond of working in the garden and doing gardening activities. When I head outside, they troop right behind me with their garden gloves and shovels.
They don’t always work with me, but they love being outside, digging in the dirt and discovering garden critters. They’ve found caterpillars, aphids (ewww), ladybugs, baby rabbits, and watched a huge variety of birds.
Since this is our first year gardening in a long time, we’re starting from scratch. We’re learning tons of lessons. The weeds are putting up a good fight and the garden is a bit of a mess. Our fence is falling over. Caterpillars have eaten most of the kale. The corn never matured.
But we’ve had plenty of garden successes, too.
We haven’t let our lack of experience stop us from growing some yummy foods and having fun at the same time.
20 Reasons to Garden with Your Kids Even If You’re a Beginner
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Watering – what boy can resist? Don’t forget the boots!
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Growing a vegetable garden gets kids to try new foods. A kid will be much more likely to try a green bean or bell pepper that they helped raise.
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Gardening shows kids you don’t have to do everything perfectly to have success. I agonized over the details of the garden. Then I decided to stop debating and just start small. I’m so glad we didn’t wait until all the details were in place. If I had, I’d still be planning 🙂
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You can get creative with unusual foods not found in most grocery stores. Purple potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, and massive sunflowers are so much fun for kids to grow.
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Gardening teaches patience. Those seeds take soooo long to grow. Boy, is it exciting when they finally sprout!
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Gardening shows kids that sometimes things don’t work out the way you expected.
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Heavy equipment! We rented a tiller to break up the soil. The kids were enthralled to see “real” farming equipment in action.
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Kids will be amazed to see cucumbers, tomatoes, and peas grow where there was only dirt. It’s a great lesson to see where food comes from instead of just loading up your cart at the store.
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Little fingers can be great weed-pullers. My 4 year old has learned to recognize what’s a weed and what’s not.
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Kids love using real tools. We have a set of kid-sized rake and shovel along with the full-sized versions. Guess which ones my 4 year old chooses? He goes for the “real” thing every time. Little kids want to do “real” work when given the chance. Gardening is a fantastic place to put that into action.
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Learn together all about growing food, garden insects, weather, etc. If you compost, there are even more opportunities for learning.
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Save money! We harvested an estimated 30 pounds of cucumbers, 50 pounds of tomatoes and 4 bunches of kale. Our garden paid for itself this year. Next year, our expenses will be even less.
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Growing a vegetable garden encourages your family to eat more healthy foods. When you’ve got cucumbers and tomatoes coming out of your ears, it’s easy to pick them for a healthy snack instead of something from a bag or a box.
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Gardening is great exercise (for you, too!)
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Gardening offers plenty of natural learning opportunities. Kids can write plant labels, keep a garden journal, start seeds together, help build plant supports, identify garden insects, check the weather and cook new recipes.
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Gardening gets kids outside. Fresh air, bugs, dirt, and exercise are so good for kids and parents!
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Gardening encourages teamwork. My kids have worked together to lay down mulch and pick tomatoes. They temporarily forget their competitiveness.
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Growing a garden is just plain fun. Kids will have a real sense of accomplishment when they work on a garden with you.
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Working in the garden tuckers ’em out. It makes for a good night’s sleep (for you, too)!
I can’t wait for next spring to come along so we can start on Garden 2.0! We’re going to get some gardening magazines and seed catalogs and dream up an even better version.
