10 Perks of Gardening with kids

The snow and ice is (thankfully) behind us! Time to start thinking about the garden. Below are a few reasons why you should encourage your kids to join you in the backyard.

Last week we had an ice storm that postponed our spring a smidge. While the birds look truly miserable and confused out there I refuse to let this slight setback dampen my spirits. It's been a long winter and I am itching to plan our summer garden.

I say "our" for good reason. It isn't to be campy or inclusive, it truly is a team effort around here. My husband is responsible for turning the soil and preparing it for planting and the girls and I are the planters, weeders, harvesters etc.

I have been gardening with my oldest daughter for a few years now, just like my mother used to garden with me when I was little. Gardening with kids can be a fun and rewarding experience, here are just a few reasons why you should encourage your kids to garden with you!

1. Bonding Time. Between work, school, extra curricular activities,family functions, and everything else we have to deal with in this fast paced life, it can be difficult to spend actual QUALITY time with our kids.Gardening gives you an excellent opportunity to spend one on one time with your children with the added benefits of teaching new skills and accomplishing a task. A chance to ask each other questions and reconnect. Trust me, years from now they won't remember what they grew in their gardens, but they will remember how you made them feel while they were planting.

2. Gardening engages all of their senses! Have a toddler? Gardening will keep them busy for HOURS and helps them build fine motor skills and increase their sensory development. There are so many colors, shapes, textures to investigate, and they probably won't leave a single inch unexplored. Any preschool teacher will tell you how important this type of play is to the overall success of your child's early learning.

3. Along with all of those new sensory skills, your child will also build physical strength while gardening. Just ask my two year old every time she "helps" me carry the watering can! Grownups and kids alike can benefit from the physical pursuit that comes with keeping a garden. The stretching, the pulling, the digging, who needs a gym membership when you have a plot of earth out back!

4. Keeping a garden with your children can encourage healthy eating habits for life! Showing your kids where their food comes from and giving them a hand in cultivating encourages your child to try new vegetable and fruit. A study performed by the British Psychological Society showed that when children were given access to a school based gardening program, they ate 26% more fruit and vegetables than the students who chose not to participate in the program.

5. Teaching Tool. Gardening is a home-schoolers dream come true! Your backyard is dripping with scientific concepts just waiting to be discovered and discussed. Our backyard is crawling with insects and wildlife (if rabbits, squirrels and birds qualify). All your kid has to do is plop his/her chubby little fist into the soil and pull up a worm and all of a sudden they are learning about soil composition, the importance of fertilizer and beneficial insects. Don't have a backyard? Container gardening indoors or out helps children practice measurement growth. The most important thing is gardening encourages the child to ask questions. LOTS of questions.

6. Gardening with your kids encourages and enforces living a more eco friendly lifestyle. Learning about the importance of compost, recycling egg cartons as seed starters and turning milk jugs into bird feeders are only some of the ways you can engage your child about earth friendly solutions in the garden. Starting our kids young in the discussion about the environment and serving as a positive example for them is just smart given our current environment climate. Let's raise informed, smart and sensitive kids, the world needs them to grow into smart, informative and sensitive adults.

7. Responsibility and Patience. Nothing beats this life lesson, hands down. Having creative control, from planning the garden, planting to harvesting will leave them feeling more confident and empowered. If your child can lovingly tend a garden for two months and put in the time and care that a garden requires, the satisfaction they feel when they bite into that tomato or harvest that first pea will be all the reward they'll need.

8. It gets them to unplug and enjoy real life. I grew up in the late 80's, when computers were just beginning to become accessible to everyone. Our options for play were sometimes Outside or Outside, but today more and more time is being spent indoors playing on some sort of electronic device. It's a strange time in history when virtual farming is more popular and widespread than ACTUAL gardening. Kids are more easily "bored" and there seems to be an ever growing restlessness caused by the need for instant gratification. Gardening gives them time away from the world wide web to enjoy this great big world!

9. Gardening is great for your kids mental health! I don't know what it is about sitting in the grass, digging in the dirt that leaves you feeling so good. Maybe its our internal desire to feel connected to other living things that inspires us to garden in the first place. Gardening reduces stress and anxiety in both adults and children. It allows you to leave your worries aside and focus in the present moment.

10. The last reason is my number one reason that you should include your children early in your growing pursuits...gardening with your kids lets you be a kid again! Gardens are filled with wonder and as parents we have a unique opportunity to re-live our childhoods through the lives of our children! It's an amazing feeling to feel genuinely delighted at the sight of a butterfly again or to anxiously follow your child to the garden to see if your plants have sprouted or grown overnight. Digging in the earth and getting dirty with your kids is just plain fun!

So get out there, go play in the dirt and grow something special!