Including Your Children in Gardening Activities. When the pandemic hit, many families were forced to stay indoors. Many turned to home gardening to pass the time and add to their product supply. With less produce available at grocery stores, many decided to grow their own.
If you’ve embraced the home gardening trend, you may want to share the fun with your children. It’s a beautiful way to spend time together on a shared project. It’s educational and recreational, and it can be sensational.
Everyone in Singapore knows the weather doesn’t make it easy to grow plants. The climate is unpredictable between the diabolical heat and the unexpected deluges of rain. But the rewards of this trend go beyond the delicious crops we harvest. The time we spend gardening with our children will reap new family closeness. Read on – Including Your Children in Gardening Activities:
Children may instinctively know their food doesn’t magically appear on store shelves. But watching their gardening efforts turn into a bowl of salad will thrill them.
As your children are assigned “their own” seeds to plant, they become invested in the result. Even young children can get involved by watering plants. You can make a game out of weeding; the kid who collects the most weeds wins a prize. At the end of the gardening season, the family will celebrate as they share the harvest. Children will feel a sense of pride in their role in family gardening.
As children get their hands dirty, children learn to revel in the many joys of gardening. Whether planting seedlings or examining roots, they are learning new types of fun. Even watching as the Earth absorbs the water is fascinating for children. They can also enjoy experimenting with different kinds of plant food.
Children can learn to love the planet by feeling the Earth between their fingers. They will learn to grow to produce without harmful chemicals. Using their efforts, they gain an accurate perspective of how the Earth gives us food.
If they grow vegetables themselves, kids will find them more appealing. Vegetables ordinarily met with protest would find approval because they worked to develop them.
Bring your children to one of Singapore’s on-site farms to kindle their interest in gardening. There, they will see gardeners at work and see a large-scale example of gardening. Some farms offer tours and provide educational opportunities.
Another way to involve your children in gardening is to join a community gardening group. The NParks’ program called “Community in Bloom” has sparked the interest of many such groups. The latest statistics show there are 1300 such groups in Singapore. The “Community in Bloom” program offers indoor gardening starter kits to further your children’s gardening efforts.
You may be wondering which plants are easy for children to grow. Here are some suggestions:
Since these plants love sunshine, they are ideal for growth in Singapore. They bloom in three or four days, and leaves can be harvested in 75-80 days. They can be eaten in salads or as part of stir-fry recipes.
Kids enjoy planting mizuna because it proliferates during any time of year. The plant blooms in 7-10 days and can be picked in 6-8 weeks. Mizuna looks like an arugula and has a peppery taste.
These tiny tomatoes are a favorite with kids because they are fun to pick and eat. They flourish In Singapore’s sunlight. The green tomatoes appear in 5-14 days and will be ripe in 2-3 months.
These are good plants for kids because they are easy to tend. They need a warm sheltered place to grow. Children can task responsibility for making sure the soil doesn’t dry out. The seeds take 1-2 weeks to grow, and the plant will take 3-4 months to develop fully.
If your children are enjoying the experiences they have with home gardening, you can add to them by attending gardening events. You can visit the NP Parks website and the gardening section. There will be events to attend and links to videos and resources to learn more about gardening.