Any parent knows that time in the garden with your children can be great fun. Whether you’re having a family barbeque, or kicking a football around with the kids, being in the garden together is a great way to make memories together. Teaching your children how to join in with gardening can be a great way to teach them about nature, nutrition and respect for the Earth.
Grow Vegetables
If you have little fussy eaters, or kids who’ve shown an interest in growing things, setting up a simple vegetable garden is a great summer holiday project. Find a good topsoil supplier, and set up a good vegetable bed to start growing some of your own food.
Vegetable dodgers might be more tempted into eating their five a day if they’ve helped to grow it, and you can use the garden to teach the kids about where their food comes from. Use the veg to create fun recipes and the garden can become a great family food source.
Choose easy to grow veggies like sugar snap peas, lettuce, carrots, potatoes or tomatoes. Bright colours, sweet flavours and veggies they recognise from favourite dishes will help the little ones keep interested in growing food with you.
Pot Colorful Flowers
Give the kids a large flower pot each. You could even encourage them to decorate the pots with outdoor paint so they know which is theirs. Take the children to the garden and let them choose flowers from the seasonal displays to plant in their pot.
The seasonal flowers will create an instant colourful display so the kids can see the results of their choices immediately, which is great for toddlers who may have less patience waiting for something to grow.
Make A Fairy Garden
Choose a secluded or sheltered corner of the garden and create a garden together for fairies to visit. Send the children to collect pretty things from around the garden, like stones and fallen flowers to put in the garden. You could visit the garden centre to look for small garden decorations, or even a pet store to buy pieces designed to go in fish tanks, to find small houses, castles or furniture to put out for the fairies.
Add small plants and encourage little ones to decorate with ribbons and leaves. Lay down stones for paths and use twigs for fences. The enchanted space is sure to fascinate small children, and they can begin to build an appreciation for the outside world.
Make Animal Homes
Do something positive for the smaller residents of your garden and teach children about taking care of animals by setting up a bug box. Lay a plant pot down on its side or use an open sided box, and send the children to find things to fill it with. Drill holes in a log for bees to nest in. Add stacks of pine cones, leaves, twigs, dried grass or pieces of broken flower pot to encourage ladybirds, woodlice and other crawlies to live in.
Build or buy a hedgehog house to tuck under a hedge to encourage hedgehogs to stop by your garden. Just remember to feed them cat or dog food, not the traditional bread and milk, as this is actually bad for their stomachs.
Buy a bird table and make filling it with seed and leftover bread part of the kids’ chores. You can enjoy watching winged visitors to the garden together as a family, and maybe even use it to learn about different kinds of garden birds.
To encourage frogs, make a container pond. A pond in a shallow container is much safer for little ones than a full scale pond. Find a container that is large, shallow and has no drainage holes. Add pond plants, and an oxygenator to keep the water clean. Find it a place in the shade and wait for frogs!
Choose Simple Projects
For small children, there are lots of great easy garden activities you can do that don’t require them to pay attention for very long, or have to wait for things to grow or animals to arrive.
Teach the children to make daisy chains, or make small flower crowns from the flowers they choose around the garden. Send them to look for four leaf clovers, or show them how buttercups reflect yellow light under their chins. Ask them to count how many different kinds of animals they can find around the garden, or get them to draw the flower they think is the prettiest. Even very tiny children can interact with the garden and begin to learn to love the outdoors.