Lessons Learned in the Garden

“A new study conducted for Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has found that encouraging children to learn gardening boosts their development by helping them become happier, more confident, and more resilient. In addition, gardening also helps teach children patience and the benefits of a healthy diet and lifestyle.”  

–Quote from an article titled, Teach Children Gardening and Give Them a Natural Head Start in Life on NaturalNews.com

It’s that time of year again for planting and growing things, and I’m happy that my five-year-old seems just as excited about the garden as he was last year.  It’s an exciting year for me too because we’ve planted things I’ve never attempted to grow before.  At his request, we’ve got corn, carrots, onions, and garlic, and we also have the old staples: cucumbers and tomatoes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to prune back some bushes and clip the perennials before they budded (makes them stronger), so my flower beds are crowded with daisies falling over on top of other flowers, and an off-shoot of a butterfly bush is growing between two bushes that were already suffocating each other.

The yard is a work-in-progress, and it always will be, but even when it’s unruly, it gives me great pleasure to see the plants circle around to their blooming glory.  It’s also the potential that gives me thrills – thinking about what I might be able to do once the boys are older and strong enough to haul dirt and wheelbarrows!

It’s my goal to keep them interested in cultivating a garden, so I don’t pressure them, and I let them plant what they want and overwater it at times too.  If something doesn’t grow, I tell my son we learned something, and we’ll try again next year.  My five-year-old is always talking about planting this or that, and getting a new packet of seeds is like getting a new toy.

Yesterday we went to visit some long-time friends of mine, and I knew the five-year-old would love their garden, which is spread out over their whole yard.  It’s one of those cozy cottage-like places.  Of course he was in heaven as he asked what the names of the plants were, and when I wasn’t looking my friend gave my son a packet of green bean seeds and some seeds from a plant outside.

I didn’t think we’d have room for those green beans, but my husband enthusiastically went out with my son and extended the garden by several feet.  So now we’ve got green beans too!

When I mentioned to my son that he might be a gardener when he grows up he said no because he wants to study snakes.  I had the pleasure of telling him that it’s possible to do more than one thing when we grow up, and he could certainly have his own garden.  A light bulb seemed to go on over his head when I said that.

Last year I used his enthusiasm to teach him about the parts of a plant.  I found an inexpensive “Life Cycle of a Plant” poster at a teacher’s store, and we also have two helpful books at home that my son likes to read:  From Seed to Plant by Allan Fowler and How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan.  Both of these books are written for youngsters.  We also sprouted bean seeds in jars.

Gardening is a wonderful learning experience for children.  It teaches them how our food grows, about the environment, and it gives them something to take pride in.  It’s the character-building aspect of gardening that I most love.  My son has learned about patience and hard work.  And for me, it’s relaxing, except maybe when the boys are fighting over who gets to water with the hose.

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on June 13, 2012.

Please share your photos and posts about gardening with children in the comments section.

A Kindergarten Child-Led Project: Seeds, Plants, Gardening

Available Now! …

1st Grade E-book COVER jpegThe Everyday Homeschooler’s Guide to Teaching First Grade is a simple guide to homeschooling 1st grade. But it’s also much more. I recommend it for any parent who has a child between the ages of 4-8. “First Grade” is merely a guide. Not an absolute.

This guide will help you figure out your family’s unique priorities, and it’ll show you how to make homeschooling your child easier. Learn how to set up a learning environment that honors your child’s questions and creativity. Soon you will become a family of life-long learners.

Click here to learn more. Thanks so much to my readers for inspiring me to write this. I hope it helps.

 

Now back to my original post… 🙂

***

The five-year-old grew two pumpkins by himself. I’m a proud mama.

Most kindergarten curriculums include a study of how seeds grow into plants.  I did not have to do anything to entice my son into learning about seeds.  He is obsessed with them.  Whenever he gets a chance, he’ll pull seeds off trees or plants – at church, at a park, grandma’s house or our yard – and he puts them in his pocket, telling me he wants to plant them as soon as possible.  He has done this so many times that I almost want to pull my hair out, but I don’t.  I just smile and say, “Okay.”  Sometimes I have helped him plant the seeds, but usually I just let him plant them wherever he wants, hoping knowing he might forget about them.  Since I’m a “green pinky” gardener, I usually know that the seeds he has won’t grow under the conditions in which he plants them in, but that’s not the point.  The point is to just let him have fun planting his seeds.

But I have assisted him in planting seeds under conditions that I knew hoped would grow.  Earlier this summer, we planted tomatoes, and to my surprise, he was very eager to take care of them. Since I have my hands full with two boys, I didn’t plan to plant much else, but he insisted that we plant pumpkins.  So we did.  Or I should say he did.  He planted those pumpkins, and he took care of them all summer.  He watered them every night!  I think it was quite late summer before he finally started to let his little brother do the watering, but he was still eager enough most evenings.  (He lasted longer than me.  Usually by mid-August, I’ve had enough of gardening.)  I was very proud of him.


Since plants are an interest of his, I have used the opportunity to teach him more about seeds, plants and gardening.
 This has been over a long period of time.  As I wrote about in “Learning Is Like a Chain Link Fence,” I believe the best learning comes from doing and studying something at our leisure, over time, and when we need to learn about it for a purpose.  I’ll continue to teach my son about planting, seeds and gardening in the future.  This is an easy subject for me since I enjoy gardening myself.

Here’s a list of additional projects and resources that I’ve used to teach him about seeds and plants.  And you can scroll down to see our pictures.

  • I found a “Plant: Life Cycle” Poster (see photo above) for less than $3 at a nearby teacher supply store. Though my son and I enjoy making our own educational posters, I have no problem spending a few bucks every now and then. (Actually, the price was probably the same as making one of our own.)
  • We have read and added the books How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan and From Seed to Plant by Allan Fowler to our home library.
  • Using this Martha Stewart tutorial, we tried to sprout some beans in jars.  We successfully sprouted some pinto beans, and one of them is still growing in our garden! Photos and more information below.
  • At my son’s request, we have tried several times to plant seeds from the fruits or vegetables that we eat and cook with in the kitchen.  I don’t think we’ve gotten any of those to grow yet.
  • Other than this, I have let my boys play in the garden, tend the garden and plant anything they want.  If it doesn’t grow, it’s just another lesson.

Nothing teaches a child about Earth’s bounty better than gardening.

My boys have been participating in gardening and growing plants since they were babies.

We’ve also taken advantage of local farms, and I plan to visit more as the boys get older.  We went strawberry picking last spring.

Our seed sprouting project:

Our seed sprouting project had a lot of false starts.  Thinking I could remember back to my kindergarten days, I thought we could just throw some seeds in a jar of water and watch them sprout.  Ahem….This didn’t work.  Then I tried Martha Stewart’s Garden in a Jar project.  The black beans didn’t sprout at all but that may be because they were old beans from my pantry.  The lima beans and pintos (which I bought new) started to sprout, but the limas stopped sprouting and got moldy, so I threw them out (too much water?)  The pintos were a success!

This method is simple:  Lightly wet a paper towel and put it in the bottom of a jar, place the dried beans on top of the towel and then cover the jar.  I used regular dried beans that you can buy at the grocery store.  You may need to mist the beans periodically, if the towel dries out.

Pinto bean success!  My son planted these sprouts in our garden, and one of them is still growing. I doubt it’ll make it through the winter, though. Yet that is a lesson in itself, no?


At my son’s request, we have tried planting some other things.  This lettuce was a success.  We also planted some in our garden,and though I’ve had a lot of success with lettuce over the years, I’m sorry to say that crop didn’t grow.

What kinds of things have your kids done to learn about seeds, plants and gardening?

Please sign up for my RSS Feed or subscribe by e-mail in the right margin.  I would love to get to know you, so leave a message too.