Getting kids involved in gardening
One of my kids really enjoys planting things, learning the names of flowers, watering, digging, weeding and generally being out in the fresh air helping me in the garden. Her brother is more interested in books and films but now we live here in the countryside with a large garden, he is becoming interested in being outside more.
Whenever I’m digging a trench in the vegetable garden the kids are at my side but have only got one little trowel to use or their set of plastic beach spades and invariably end up bored and throwing soil at each other which isn’t allowed and results in someone crying and needing their eye flushed out with water.
I’ve kept my eye out for a set of children’s sized long handled tools for a while now but couldn’t find anything so was delighted to see a lovely little set in Woolworths this week for £19.99 which included a shovel, a rake, a broom, a wheelbarrow, gardener’s apron and gloves all in lovely bright colours but proper metal implements.
It was just the thing I needed to say thank you to my daughter for being such a great little gardener and also an encouragement to my son to come and help out more instead of moaning about wanting to go inside.
Before…
After a very special trip to Woolies…
Now all I hear from my son is ‘Mummy please can we go into the vegetable patch and do some more digging?’ which is cool and they fight over who is going to sweep the path. Brilliant.
I make sure they treat the new tools with the respect all actual tools reserve by putting them away in the shed after they have used them, not swinging them around their heads uneccessarily, or even just leaving them lying around where someone could trip over them. With a bit of luck they’ll last for a few years and will have helped me occupy a couple of energetic four year olds while I’m too busy in the garden to entertain them.
The other thing that’s really helping instilling a love of gardening is having them choose seeds (pumpkins, sunflowers), sowing seeds, label seed, water seeds and then amazingly seeing things grow just a few days later. They think it’s excellent fun.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
What fantastic tools!! Interest in the outside, garden, growing, living things… all fantastic stuff. Our garden is much much smaller, but T&J constantly run over to check the progress of their different pots of various veg we are growing - they are always there with a watering can if needed, and a trowel to “help”. They both have a set of mini gardening tools, but the idea of a brush… now that sounds like a good idea to me