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Head Outdoors With the Kids
In celebration of spring's heady arrival, make a beeline for your garden -- with the kids in tow, of course. Gardening can teach children math, science, history and nutrition -- and can offer some marvelous shoulder-to-shoulder time with their parents. It's always best to keep the activities fun and simple. Select plants appropriate to your region of the country, encourage your kids' excited exploration and enjoy watching the progress they make.According to educators responding to a recent survey by the Texas Cooperative Extension, kids who participate in gardening programs generally become science enthusiasts. "Our mission is to use horticulture to grow good kids," said Lisa Whittlesey, coordinator for Texas Coop Extension's Junior Master Gardener (JMG) program. "We hope they also learn a lot about gardening." In a national poll of more than 440 JMG leaders, 85 percent believed the program increased a child's interest in science, Whittlesey reports. And some happy news for parents: Kids who participated in JMG had a greater willingness to try new fruits and vegetables.
Young students enrolled in the JMG program will know that if you're longing for some Fragaria ananassa shortcake, you love strawberry shortcake. Or if you've just got to have Prunus persica ice cream, you've got peaches (and cream) on your mind. The JMG program is available in all 50 states; check out jmgkids.com for more information.
Plotting a garden teaches kids counting and measuring, graphing, fractions and percentages. After measuring the garden, help your child make a scale drawing on a piece of paper. For example, let a one-inch square on the paper represent one square foot in the garden. If your garden measures ten feet by ten feet, have your child draw ten rows of ten one-inch boxes. Ask him or her to calculate how many plants your garden can sustain if you insert one plant per square foot. Draw pictures on the grid of the kinds of plants your child would like to grow. Then you could ask, for example, what percentage of the garden is 24 pepper plants. Cross-pollinating math and gardening adds up to a terrific learning experience.
Kids love to explore and discover -- and they're looking to you to help guide their journey. Try kicking things off with A Gardener's Alphabet by Mary Azarian (Houghton Mifflin, ages 4-8; $16). A collection of hand-colored woodcuts presents the youngest listeners and readers with a tribute to all kinds of gardens.
Before the first foray into the garden, you might want to set aside some empty yogurt containers for indoor planting. Try saving seeds from favorite fruits like apples, pears and pumpkins so the children can begin watching the plants' growth up close. Help your kids chart the seedlings' progress until they're ready to be taken outside. Then work on special markers together to note the plants' locations.
Kids in the early grades are more interested in the activities than in the end result. So let them be a part of the decision-making process -- what to plant, when and why. Digging holes, filling them with water, looking for bugs, learning to read seed packets and making plant markers -- these are all great activities to encourage. Making Minestrone by Stella Blackstone (Barefoot Books, ages 4-8; $15.99) gives young readers a story, ingredients and a recipe as a preview of the harvest to come.
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