Gardening is a great activity to help you bond with your family. It will provide your family with a lot of time to talk and get to know your children on a deeper level. Gardening also requires a lot of hard work. First you have to till up the soil, then you have to plant your seeds, water, and then spend the majority of the time pulling out pesky weeds. With all of the hard work and time necessary for a successful garden one question that we have is, “What can kids learn from gardening?”.
Kids can learn and benefit a great deal from gardening. Gardening will teach them many things including planning, consistency, accountability, self reliance, environmental stewardship, team work, healthy eating, and that hard work pays off.
We are still not passed all of the hard work and time required for gardening. Keep reading and I will break down each one of the benefits of gardening for your child into more detail. By the end of this article you will be convinced that your child really will learn a lot from gardening.
Planning
Planning is an essential part of gardening. Without proper planning the chances of you getting a harvest are really small. First off where are you going to grow your garden? Do you live in the city and are limited on space? Or do you live in the suburbs with a bigger lot and space is not an issue. What type of climate do you live in? How long is your growing season? What types of plants do well in your area?
All of these questions and more need to be answered prior to even starting your garden. By including your child on these decisions they will learn a lot about the importance of proper planning. If your child is old enough let them do the research on your area. There’s tons of ideas for different types of gardens that can be grown in pots or vertical structures on Pinterest.
On Amazon you can even get an indoor garden grower from Aerogarden. This cool indoor garden will make it so you can grow fresh produce year round. It includes grow lights and tells you when to add water. This would be a great option for someone in the city, or if you have real young children that you want to get involved into gardening. If you are interested in viewing this awesome product you can follow this link to Amazon.
If space is not an issue then all you need to do is pick a spot on your property for your garden. The next part of planning would be what do you want to grow? By allowing your child to help with the decision of what to plant they will feel more of a role in the garden. Instead of just having to help with their parents garden they will feel that it is partly their garden.
Consistency
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”
Dwayne Johnson
Consistency is key to successful gardening. The very first year I planted a garden with my children we slacked on pulling the weeds. They quickly overtook the garden and it became a big mess. You have to consistently weed, water, and fertilize your garden. This is one of the greatest life lessons you can teach your child. In life I believe that one of the biggest shortcomings of people is consistency.
I wonder how many more Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Oprah Winfrey’s we would have in the world if people were more consistent. With a garden you plant a tiny little seed and with consistent care it will flourish and bring you a great bounty of food. Similar to life, every successful person was consistent in their pursuit of happiness. When they failed they learned from their mistakes and moved on and kept consistently trying and that path eventually lead to greatness.
In our world today everything is instant gratification. We watch TV Ondemand, eat fast food, microwave, google this, and YouTube that. Having to consistently put in effort is something that is getting harder and harder for people to do. Gardening will help to overcome this and teach your child the valuable skill of gardening.
Accountability
A dead plant will surely teach a child accountability. If it is their responsibility to water and the plant dies then that is on them. At the same time if it is their responsibility to water and the plant lives then they get the recognition of knowing that they made that happen.
This is a great lesson in cause and effect. You put bad in you get bad out sort of thing. If it is your child’s job to weed the garden and it gets overrun with weeds then the garden plants get choked out and die. If they weed the garden on a consistent basis then the plants will not be competing for nourishment with weeds and they will thrive.
Like consistency, accountability is another trait that is lacking in our world. It seems that it is always someone else’s fault when a problem happens. It dealing with youth programs I have witnessed this first hand. It seems that it is always the teachers fault that the child failed, or the police officers fault that someone got arrested.
At times it is someone else’s fault when problems occur. However, the vast majority of the time it is the persons fault that is trying to pass the blame onto someone else. With gardening you don’t have that. If you put good in you get good out and the gardener has sole accountability for that.
Self Reliance
Through gardening you learn how to become more reliant on yourself. By consistently putting in the effort to grow a garden your child will get to reap the rewards during the harvest. Every year my wife takes the vegetables and fruit that we grow and cans a good portion of them. We can then eat the produce that we raised through the winter.
It has come to be a good tradition for our family to all chip in and help out. My kids have helped snap beans with us from a young age. All of the skills that your child will learn from gardening will help them to be more independent and take care of themselves. They will have a better understanding of where food comes from and what it takes to get it from a seed to the table. Gardening will ultimately help them build their self confidence through the knowledge that they can do hard things and be reliant on themselves.
Environmental Stewardship
Working the dirt will give your child an appreciation for the environment. By putting in the work to take care of their plants they will come to have respect for the environment. This will also provide you a great opportunity to teach your child how to properly care for the environment.
Through gardening your child will also develop a skill of taking care of another living thing and giving back. This could be a good opportunity for you to teach your child to give back and volunteer. If you are interested in reading an article on volunteer opportunities I have two that cover volunteer opportunities for your child. You can find them here at the following links:
- 10 Incredible Father Son Volunteer Opportunity Ideas
- 10 Uplifting Father Daughter Volunteer Opportunity Ideas
Team Work
By working in a garden together as a family your child will learn the importance of working together as a team. If someone in the family slacks on their job then it makes the process harder for everyone in the family. Each person in the family will rely on each other to grow a successful garden.
This is a valuable lesson that will teach your child to depend on others. They can’t always pull the full load and need to rely on others at times. It will also teach them that working together as a team will make the process go a lot quicker and smoother than doing it all on your own.
Eat Healthy
With the bounty of fresh vegetables and fruit you will have from the garden your child will want to eat healthy. When they’ve put in the hard work to grow the garden they will be so excited to cook up and eat everything from the garden. If you are real ambitious you can preserve some of the produce from your garden and eat on it for months to come. My kids love being able to eat vegetables and fruits that they helped grow. They frequently ask when we are cooking vegetables, “are those from our garden?”
Hard Work Pays Off
One of the most important things that your child will learn from gardening is the value of hard work. If they consistently put in the effort they will be able to see the reward. It is still amazing to me that you can plant a little seed that will produce so much food.
The most amazing plant for this is zucchini. The first time we planted zucchini we planted four hills of it. We had zucchini coming out of our ears. We were giving it away to as many people as we could. That year my kids could really see that hard work pays off. We had so much produce that we were able to give to others and provide for our family.
To summarize, the effort that you put into growing a garden will be worth it. Your child will learn so many beneficial lessons from growing a garden that far outweigh the negatives. So bring out your inner green thumb and get gardening!