Cedar Park, TX

At The Goddard School, we have garden beds to incorporate into some of our science and nature curriculum.  As our summer camp is approaching, here are some ideas for home gardening with your child!

If you want your child to grow up to be a gardener, it’s important to remember to share gardening experiences with them throughout their childhood. These include frequent, pleasurable occurrences, designs that include messy, colorful plots and great memories of working together in the garden. Each child’s capabilities and attention span will vary so it’s important to adjust your expectations. The goal is to teach your children to respect and enjoy gardening as well as experience a feeling of “I did it myself” at harvest time.

The Composting Council of Canada developed the following good reasons to foster a lifelong love of gardening in children.
1. Health:  Growing your own vegetables makes it easier to get enough servings each day.
2. Exercise: Digging, turning, spreading compost, mulching, hoeing, excavating rocks – all burn calories, help build muscles and strengthen hearts and lungs.
3. Save Money: Even a small vegetable patch can reduce your expenses.
4. Education:  Gardening is terrific for providing hands-on lessons in botany, zoology, weather, hydrology, as well as cycles of life, death and physical decay.
5. Waste Reduction and Recycling: Compost piles transform kitchen scraps, leaves and yard waste into rich soil amendments. Gardeners can reuse of all kinds of cans, cartoons, meat trays and more.
6. Stress Relief: Planting seeds and tending plants can restore balance and perspective.
7. Togetherness: Use vegetables grown together to make delicious meals together and donate abundance to people who need it.
8. Helps Improve Reading and Math Skills:  Children can make plant markers, read seed packets and even help pay for nursery plants.
9. Memory Building: Provides great memories for the years to come.
10. Satisfaction: The more time you spend with your children in the garden, the more they will feel the garden is truly theirs and the more eager they will be to take care of it.

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Tags: Cedar Park childcare, daycare, Garden, preschool

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 3:14 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.