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Gardening together is an excellent way to teach children.

Gardeners need to have good management skills in order to have a garden that is productive, so it is something that children will learn naturally when working side by side with their parents.

Make planting easy for the kids

A simple grid for planting can be made from pieces of PVC, PVC corners, and wire; all are readily available at hardware stores. Saw the PVC into 30cm lengths, and use a 3/8 inch drill bit for making holes in the PVC for the wires to go through. Mark the PVC pieces at 7.6cm, 15.2cm, and 22.8cms, then drill holes through the PVC at the marks. Assemble the PVC into a square using the corners, then insert wire through the holes in the PVC. Now you have a planting grid!

You can set your child to planting seeds for small plants, such as radishes, carrots, and beets, or onion sets using the grid while you are nearby doing some garden maintenance or other planting. This is not only a way to teach a kid how to plant, but also encourages him to want to do garden maintenance himself, to see his work come to fruition. And she will probably enjoy eating vegetables as a side benefit!

Garden maintenance

Maintaining a garden is a good way to teach children how to take care of their things. When a child plants quick sprouting and growing plants like radishes and onions, they become interested in what they have done.

Impressing upon her that a garden needs taking care of through watering and weeding, will help her get in the habit of taking care of something.

That lesson can be carried through to taking care of toys for a young child or even a pet for an older child.

Buying a watering can and small gardening tools and spending time together out in the garden is an excellent method of how to teach a kid to take care of his own things. He can weed and water the patches he planted while you weed and water the larger garden.

Bringing the lesson inside

For tools to last, gardeners need to clean them and put them away. Kids learn by example, so end your gardening time by showing your kid how to clean and stow her tools while you clean yours.

Make it a fun time together and she will learn naturally at your side.

Use the same approach about toys and games. While you gather up laundry, she can be picking up her toys. Teaching her to check to see if the toys are dirty or damaged, then taking the appropriate steps to clean or repair them, is a way to teach her good management skills in regards to her possessions.

Of course, Mum or Dad will have to do the repairs or replacement for a young child, but you are working on building skills that she will use for a lifetime.

Do you garden with your little one? What is their favourite thing to plant? Please SHARE in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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  • Sadly im not much of one for messing about in the garden.

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  • I love gardening with my family. We enjoy planting basil and rosemary. Cherry tomatoes are like a weed at our house, so we don’t have to plant them, but we do enjoy picking and eating them!

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  • It is usually gardening bonding time with my little one and her grandfather.

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  • if I can get kids I know or the grandkids too, ould make me complee a proyject been fo ages wanted too do. A vegie arden healy food to eat,my own veggies what a treat. Me and my pommie nephew whoI love,he would help with the above

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  • And as messy as it can be everyone likes playing in dirt

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  • My kids enjoy picking vegies from our garden for awhile til they get bored!

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  • Kids love gardening! Definitely helps them when it comes to eating vegies too!

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  • Love gardening and love the produce from the garden. Gardening brings joy to everyone, time spent outside, together time and the wonder of watching produce grow and then eating some of the produce.

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  • Wonderful article, I really enjoyed reading it! I’ve never been interested in gardening, always wondering what the big deal was, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve become more interested and can see the benefits! I’ll be starting a veggie garden very soon which I’m most excited about, and I’ll be encouraging my kids to help. I know my youngest, who is 3, will be very keen to help me (and likely take over). I wish I’d gotten into it sooner, but better late than never!

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  • Yes miss 3 and I have a garden. She loves planting all types of things. Beans, spring onions are her favorite

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  • My 3yr loves to help me in our little veggie garden.

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  • I do know this, but I’m not and have never been a gardener. My Mum often exclaims how she has 4 children and not one of them likes gardening. I reply that she was so good at it, we didn’t need to be! We have all low maintenance plants that my husband takes care of. I kill everything – except two very special gardenias that I’ve managed to keep alive. I just recently killed a cactus terrarium and my small bamboo is looking sick too. Both of these are supposed to survive anything — except me, obviously!!

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  • Great tips for a great and such constructive activity. Before kids I always loved to garden. But since I’ve kids it so doesn’t have my priority, I’m afraid I never did much gardening with my kids…

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  • A good learning idea. Dads need to dig the soil over and add gypsum if it is too hard. Vegetables will not form properly if the soil it too hard. For those listed above it needs to be soft for the roots to penetrate the soil after the fine little leaves have come through the topsoil. They may even come up quicker than it says on the back of the packet. Spring onions grown amongst carrots stop little grubs attacking the actual carrot in the soil.
    You can buy Junior Garden Tools too, not necessarily plastic when they are big enough to handle them. Even old table forks can used to loosen little weeds in between rows of seeds / small plants. Later on they might like to progress to drawf beans so they are low enough for them to help pick the beans when they are ready. The birds love to chew off the tops of peas as they come through or soon afterwards so I suggest you don’t encourage them to grow them or they will lose interest very quickly It can be very upsetting seieng your peas starting to grow, then suddenly there is only useless stems. They don’t re-shoot.

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  • Think I am about to start this with my boys :) loving the tips.


    • Enjoy setting up your garden – the children will love having their own little patch in the garden.

    Reply

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