planting seeds

Kids Grow Wild

By in Play 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

Britmums and MoneySuperMarket have offered Bloggers the chance to take part in the Kids Grow Wild challenge with their children.

My boys love playing outside in the garden, with their ride-on toys, footballs, slides and tunnels but we don’t have too much experience in gardening and planting. My oldest recently grew a beanstalk at school and we have been given tomato plants by a relative to grow in our garden, but I have to admit I am a bit hopeless with gardening and I do need to make more  of an effort with this kind of thing, so this seemed like a good opportunity for us.

As part of the challenge we were sent a children’s gardening kit from Little Pals who sell quite a wide range of children’s gardening tools and sets, together with some packets of seeds including sunflowers, pansies,

The kit contained a lovely green watering can, children’s gardening gloves, a little spade and fork and of course the seeds.

The watering can immediately attracted my boys interest as they love to play with water and water all of the plants in the garden

boy with green watering can boy looking with green watering can  baby toddler with green watering can baby watering the plantsbaby and watering can in the garden toddler As you can see our garden is quite wild so the name Kids Grow Wild is quite fitting for me! Although I am proud to say the grass has been cut today for once! 😀 (after these pics were taken!!)

To plant the seeds I decided to do this just with my youngest while the older two were in their school and nursery. He is 22 months and has not yet tried much of this kind of activity before and he really loved it. He was digging in the ground with the spade and I asked him to fill a tray with some soil so that we could put the seeds inside.

toddlers digging in the gardenHe was very interested in the seeds and enjoyed picking them up one by one and placing them into the tray which is great for developing fine motor skills.

sunflower seeds toddler picking sunflower seeds developing fine motor skills pincer gripOur seeds might not end up growing too successfully knowing my track record, but you never know! And even if not, little Mr R has enjoyed himself getting dirty digging and watering in the garden and exploring the seeds, and there is lots of learning going on there too!

This post is an entry for BritMums’ #KidsGrowWild Challenge”, with MoneySuperMarket.

Getting Kids Interested In The Garden

By in Education, Play 10 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

My 4 year old is in reception and this half term their topic has been ‘In The Garden.’ Until now, he mainly considered the garden as a place to run around and play which is of course really good for children! But there is also a wealth of opportunities for learning and getting kids interested in the garden.

Yesterday he came home from school with a bean stalk which he had planted in school, and he wanted to transfer it to our garden. He was telling me all about what the bean stalk needs to grow taller – sunlight and water.

getting kids interested in the gardenThere are so many different ideas you could do with children to grow things in the garden:

  • Growing Sunflowers
  • Growing vegetables – in the past we have grown some pepper and tomatoes in pots in the garden
  • You could even get an allotment or consider helping out in a community allotment if you notice your child has a real interest in it!
  • If you don’t have much garden space, the easiest one is to start with growing cress seeds in a pot on your window sill

You can look here to learn more about growing seeds with children

There is so much to talk about with them about the different flowers or vegetables which grow – the different colours, shapes, sizes, or tastes of fruit and vegetables that are grown. If you grow vegetables perhaps it will help get them enthusiastic to eat them up too! This is something I would love to do more of with the kids, its lovely to see how proud they are when they make something.

getting kids interested in the garden

Plants are not the only area to explore in the garden – what about all the wildlife, birds and mini beasts! Even in cities or towns, there will be plenty of life to discover in the garden. My boys are a little bit squeamish about worms, slugs or snails (I think they have got that from me – sorry boys! I should have kept my discomfort to myself and let them experience these things to learn! ) but they are comfortable enough with ladybirds, butterflies or the local cats which some times come into the garden, and very keen on birds.

There are things you could do to encourage more wild life into your garden, so that you can observe them with the children. I remember growing up we had large lavender bushes in the gardens which really attracted so many butterflies, and lavender is great too with its strong smell and colour all adding to the sensory experience for the children in the garden! To attract birds you could think of getting a bird bath and putting out bird food. For some expert advice on encouraging birds, have a look here.

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