Early Learning in the Garden

I admittedly have a “black thumb” when it comes to gardening.  I have never been able to keep any kind of houseplant alive.  However, I really love the idea of growing our own food, and urged my husband to get on board with the idea of planting a few vegetables this year.  Luckily, once he was invested in the project, he built a raised bed and remembers to water the plant regularly.

Most of us have heard that when children help with growing fruits and vegetables they are more likely to eat them!  I am going to take it a step further and give a few activities to engage little ones in the garden.  If you are not growing your own garden, these ideas can still be used at a farm or farmer’s market.

• Give them their own tools and their own space to dig!  This can be as simple as letting them use the plastic containers that your seedlings came in (which is what we did) or actually making them their own space like this one from The Imagination Tree. Bottom line: if you want to be working in the garden, give them something similar to do to keep them engaged.

Roo collected sticks from around the yard and used the empty seedling containers to create art!

• Go on a color scavenger hunt—find every color of the rainbow in your garden/backyard/farm/market. Pick the red tomatoes, find a yellow blossom, point to the green zucchini….etc

finding the red, ripe tomatoes and picking them!

• Count your harvest.  How many tomatoes did we pick?  We’ll need ___ lettuce leaves for our salad.

• Sort your harvest. You can sort by color, fruit or vegetable, shape, sweet or sour, etc.  You can use hula hoops or buckets to sort the produce into.

• Introduce descriptive vocabulary that engages all the senses: talk about textures, tastes, shapes, smells, and noises that they make when dropped into a bucket.  Possibly the most fun activity related to gardening is the taste test!

smelling... 

tasting....

Once they are a little older, they can help with the planting and maintenance as well.

We have been successful (so far) with lettuce, basil, zucchini and tomatoes.  Our strawberries keep getting eaten and aren’t quite flourishing.  I know that our garden is small by some standards and we didn't grow from seeds, but for our first year of gardening, I am proud that we are producing anything!!!  I absolutely LOVE picking fresh food to use in my recipes and to serve/eat as a healthful snack.