Are you looking for ways to spend more quality time with the kids? Want an excuse to drag them away from their iPads and other gadgets for a few hours? A garden project, or two or three of them, might be the answer. Gardening for kids doesn’t require a huge amount of money either. Below are some great outdoor family fun ideas.
Why Gardening for Kids?
Spending more time outdoors is beneficial for kids’ physical and mental well-being, as well as your own. All too often, when school is over, they find themselves sitting in front of the TV or glued to their smartphones. Here are three ideas to try as a family.
Upcycled Outdoor Science Lab or Craft Area
Get hold of a giant old spool. You might find one in a local salvage or reclamation yard. Turn it on its end and create an outdoor science lab, play kitchen, or craft area. All three of these activities are much better if undertaken outdoors!
Cut circles out of the spool so you can recess bowls, make a canopy over the area, and you’ll likely find it tough to get the kids back indoors! If you decide on a science lab as one of the projects to do as a family, then remember to include safety goggles and lab coats for all. Safety is paramount when gardening for kids.
Create a Wildlife Pond
Bring your kids a few steps closer to wildlife by creating a garden pond. It doesn’t have to be a huge lake to attract insects and other water-loving creatures. A company such as Water Garden will be able to provide the equipment, so all you’ll need to worry about is digging a hole that’s deep enough.
A Bean Teepee
Make it large enough, and your little ones will be able to sit inside as they tend to their beans! You don’t need to worry about clearing a space of ground for planting, as long as you make it big enough to plant the seedlings and sticks for them to climb up.
Best of all, once you’ve built the framework, the kids can take care of the rest. Growing the seedlings from beans, planting and training them up the teepee poles, and then picking the produce that will appear are the basic steps.
Another tip for gardening for kids: remember to encourage them to water the plants!
Other Outdoor Family Fun Ideas
Want more options? Here are some extra outdoor ideas for fun kid-friendly projects:
- DIY climbing wall
- Zip-line
- Rope ladder
- Seesaw
- Tightrope
- Sandbox
- Garden swing
Being outdoors is vital for your child’s development, happiness, and mental well-being. So, provide them with opportunities in a garden of their own to encourage them to get outside. Gardening for kids doesn’t mean you have to spend a huge amount of money if you don’t want to either. That’s important because having kids can be expensive!
Conclusions about Gardening for Kids
There are also plenty of outdoor family fun ideas that can be helpful for getting some of those “to-do” items off the house list. Your kids will like helping out if they feel a sense of achievement when the project finishes, and they can enjoy what was created.
Spending time together is also important for family bonding. Gardening for kids is a win-win situation, whatever way you look at it.
Great Post!
May be i will try it soon.
Thanks for more information
Great to hear :)
Love this
I think it’s so important for kids to realize where food comes from and the process of what it takes to grow it. Years ago, I was watching Jamie Oliver on TV and he asked a group of elementary kids where various foods came from. It was a school in a big city. Most of them could not make the connection that fries came from potatoes or that milk came from cows.
Great photos. Adorable and fun. Wish my kids were little again.
Such cute ideas, Christy! When my kids were little we made hummingbird feeders. It was fun to fill them and hang them where they could be observed easily.
Some fun ideas here, Christy. We used to make water ponds with the boys using one of the plastic shells that you can buy. We would put some water in with rocks and a few bits of foliage and float plastic boats on it. The kids loved it.
I love these ideas, and I ESPECIALLY love that some of them are a little daring, like the zip line and tight rope. More kids outside doing rough and tumble things! Another gardening idea for kids (that I’ve been considering doing) is a fairy garden, in which a wheelbarrow is filled with ground cover plants and succulents and then there are miniature houses from the art supply store.
Love this post!
Great post 😊😊
Gardening is also a way to get the kids communing with nature. And to know that it is okay to get your hands dirty.