Its Spring time! It's perfect weather to start gardening and what better way to get the children involved in a fun and educational activity. Gardening teaches children an array of valuable lessons including responsibility, self confidence and the importance of growing healthy food. Here are some helpful guidelines to creating an enriching gardening experience with the kids. Enjoy!

Safety First

Prepping the children and the environment prior to beginning your gardening will help the experience go smoother. Make sure to have age appropriate tools available for gardening. Check out this Melissa and Doug set for a toddler, the pieces are plastic and brightly colored. For an older child you might try this Grow With Me set of miniature gardening tools. Gardening gloves are also important and come in small sizes too. Most important is to make sure any harmful items such as chemicals or large sharp gardening tools are put out of reach while gardening with with the little ones. One more safety tip as the weather warms take precautions while outside and protect everyone from the hot sun by putting up umbrellas to shield the sun and applying sunblock and wearing sun hats.

Design and Dig

Older children might be very into helping designing the garden area and deciding what to grow. There are a ton of fruits and vegetables to choose from so have them help by picking some of their favorites to plant. Speaking of "Picking" lets talk weeds! This has got to be the least fun part of gardening but it has to be done first especially after a long winter. Have the little ones put on their colorful gloves and start clearing the garden area. They might get distracted and do more digging than pulling but this is all part of the fun. Try a few of these silly garden songs to get the excitement going!

Accessories

 A fun way to spark even more creativity is getting the children engaged in making some accessories for the garden's decor. This can include things like crafting bird baths, bird feeders, wind mills or garden signs. Even more exciting is creating garden accessories with recycled materials. These recycled garden art ideas are endless and unique and will add your child's personal creative touch to the garden. This activity is sure to broaden your conversations and intrigue their little minds to not only want to learn more about  gardening but also the creatures that live among them.

Share the Bounty

Keep the educational lessons flowing by moving the conversation into the kitchen after picking your garden's bounty. It is a wonderful feeling to share the success of growing something and sharing with the tiny gardeners so why not teach them to be tiny chef's too. Fresh fruit and vegetables are so very delicious and if you have picky eaters then use some creative recipes to help make eating healthy seem fun! Remember to wash you hands!

❀ HAPPY GARDENING ❀