How to Teach Gardening to Preschoolers?
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"Gardens and children need the same things - patience, love, and someone who will never give up on them." -Nicolette Sowder. Kids are naturally curious and adventurous, so teaching them gardening can be a lot of fun.
Gardening is a great way to teach preschoolers about the natural world. It's also an opportunity for them to develop their creative skills, learn about colors and shapes, and explore the concept of cause and effect.
8 Ways How to Teach Gardening to Preschoolers
The following ways will help you to teach gardening to your kids. So, let's get started.
1. Teach Gardening in an Exciting Way
You can encourage your child to learn about gardening in a dramatic play. Whenever they think that something is interesting they want to get involved. Many gardening tools are available in the market for kids.
Children are interested in colorful tools and gloves. It is a good idea to first buy watering equipment so that it encourages them to give water to growing plants. Also, show them how to clean the tools after using them. It will help your children to learn responsibility and organization.
2. Select an Interested Plants
A great way to start teaching gardening to preschoolers is by introducing them to plants they can easily identify in their environment or at a local nursery. Gardening is important as it teaches kids how to grow food in a fun and creative way. This will help them understand the idea of "plant" and how plants grow from seeds into flowers.
Based on the interest of your child, select a plant. It would help if you made sure to choose those plants that are easy to grow. Additionally, pick up a few plants that will grow a delicious food crop that your kids may harvest from the garden and bring right to the table. Some plants you can select for gardening are sunflowers, squash, radish, tomatoes, peas, beans, and lettuce.
3. Teach your kids the fundamentals of sowing seeds and seedlings on the earth
How to till the soil and add nutrients to plants is something that kids don't want to learn now? Just teach them how to plant seeds or seedlings. Now give them the joy of watering, planting, and waiting for their little plants to sprout. This will help develop self-confidence.
4. Demonstrate to kids how to grow plants from cuttings
To tell your kids how you can grow a plant from cuttings is an interesting activity. You can try this activity by choosing plants such as succulents and bromeliads. Once they are more experienced, they can also try this activity with hard plants. It will help kids to know about the science of plants.
5. Create Exciting Items for the Garden
Create exciting items for the garden decoration, such as painting a pot in bright colors to make it more attractive, making a garden bed or plant guard out of an old tire, and making plant or herb markers out of frozen candy sticks. Convert coconut shells by painting and cleaning inside into the seedling pods. Create a bird feeder.
6. Discuss the value of native plants in gardening with your children
This point is very important that you should discuss with your kids that growing flowers and veggies needs care. How do these native plants retard the growth of non-native plants and protect the environment? Also, teach them why it is necessary to control weeds. How to take care of growing plants by regularly watering and adding nutrients.
7. Decorate Garden with Arts and Crafts
Arts and crafts are something that all kids like doing, so this hands-on learning will undoubtedly interest them. You can paint rocks to resemble ladybugs or flowers or add garden-themed cookie cutters to Play-Doh to create your objects.
Other crafts used to decorate gardening include leaf drawing, pumpkin ghost, decorating garden areas using chalk, using plastic bottle bottoms as floral stamps, and using different green circles as paper lettuce.
8. Keep Gardening Even Season Changes
During the winter season, try to keep the practice of gardening indoors. This activity will help the kids to enjoy the benefits of growing plants. So, you can select a small herb garden, a shelf planter, a fish tank, or a window box, etc.
Final Thoughts
Gardening is an exciting and interesting activity for preschoolers. So, teach gardening to preschoolers with the help of the ways mentioned earlier.
Author's Bio
Emma Grace is a well-known author with over 5 years of experience. She has written much informative content for a Perfect Essay Writing website. She has great creative potential and understands how to make compelling content.