Category: Gardening

Spring is here, which means it’s also gardening season! If every year you say you’re going to start a garden but never quite get around to it, we’re here to give you the push you need. Did you know that gardening with your little ones provides a ton of great benefits for them? Some that will stay with them throughout their life. In this blog, we’re going to dig into why gardening with your children is great for them and for you!

Physical Development & Health

Digging, planting, and watering enhance fine motor skills, coordination, and strength. Working with soil introduces beneficial microbes that can boost the immune system. Spending time in the fresh air and soaking up some Vitamin D is also great for your health!

Cognitive & Educational Growth

Gardening provides a lot of educational opportunities. From learning about life cycles, to using math to count seeds and measure growth, to being introduced to more complex scientific concepts like photosynthesis and pollination.

Emotional Well-being & Confidence

Tending to plants provides a sense of accomplishment, which builds self-esteem. The garden acts as a calming space, reducing stress and anxiety. It’s a great counterbalance to high stimulation activities that can help your child’s emotional regulation.

Responsibility

Gardening is not a one-time activity. To grow a successful garden, it requires watering, planting, pruning, and constant care. Tending a garden is a great, low-pressure way to start teaching your child how to be responsible and take care of something.

Patience

In our digital world of instant gratification, an activity that requires patience and long-term commitment is great for your little ones! It often takes weeks or sometimes months to see the fruits of your labor when it comes to gardening. This is a great lesson to impart to your children to help them avoid the need for instant gratification as they grow up!

Nutrition & Healthy Eating

Do you have a hard time convincing your child that vegetables are actually yummy? Gardening with your child can actually help! Children are more likely to eat vegetables they have grown themselves. So growing a garden can help your children develop a love, or at least tolerance, for vegetables!

Family Bonding

One of the best benefits of gardening with your children is that it offers quality family time! You can enjoy uninterrupted family time with no screens to get in the way of your bonding! Gardening is a great activity to enjoy with multiple generations of the family!

Gardening with children has many benefits including developing fine motor skills, learning valuable life skills, and building confidence. However, if you are a first time gardener, introducing you children to the world of gardening may seem like a daunting task. Fear not, we have some tips for you that will help make the process a little easier and more fun! Gardening with children doesn’t actually have to start in the garden. An important step to gardening is teaching your little ones about what they will be growing and how different fruits and vegetables form. Thanks to Mama’s Happy Hive we have a few activities that will get your little ones interested in what you will be growing in your garden!

Matching Game
A great way to introduce your little ones to gardening is to start with learning what will go into your garden! Make your own flashcards with pictures of whatever fruits, vegetables, and plants will go into your garden. Then, have your little ones match the real life fruit and veggies to the cards! If you have older children that are interested in gardening you can write out what different gardening tools are used for and have them match the use with the object!

Exploring the Seeds
A fun way for your little ones to learn more about how fruits and vegetables grow is to let them dig right in! Start with small and squishy fruits like tomatoes. Your little ones can easily get into the middle of a tomato and look at the seeds. This is a fun and interactive way for your little ones to learn more about how things grow.

Seed Matching
Another matching activity to help your little gardeners identify seeds! Take some seed packets and empty their contents into different cups. Show your children which seeds are associated with each fruit or vegetable. Then use the packets of the seeds and the pictures you have from the first activity and let your children match the seeds to the picture of what they will become and to their seed packet!

We hope you decide to give these activities a try with your aspiring gardeners! Even if you aren’t planning to garden with your little ones, they might still enjoy tearing into a tomato and finding the seeds! Let us know in the comments if your family enjoys gardening together! Remember to click the share button to share these tips with your friends and family!