All right come here, you stand here and act like, come here right in front of me.
Act like lovely little children. Can you wave at the camera? Hi! Say what are we doing?
We're on quarantine this week aren't we? Say this one has no school for at least
three weeks. This one doesn't know what's going on.
Nothing's too much different in your world is it? No? Come back! Well we lost
the Bubbyman, but what are we gonna be doing this week? We're going to be planting!
Well the trouble is when I started googling ideas for kids and gardening
activities for this time that they're gonna be home from school there was not
a whole lot of useful stuff. A lot of it was crafts that required me to supervise
and to participate and during planting season we really don't have that extra
time, so I needed to figure out some activities that were going to keep them
busy and help us actually get in a garden at the same time. So we did some
brainstorming. And we figured out a few things that might help and
maybe they'll help you too. To teach your kids about gardening to keep your kids
busy and allow you to actually get some work done in the garden at the same time.
So let's go! So the first and absolutely easiest thing to keep your kids busy
while you're working in the garden is get them a little set of pint-sized
garden tools. I think they have these just about anywhere- tractor supply or
Walmart or wherever. and give them a little spot where they're allowed to
tear up whatever they want and let them loose. This works particularly well for
little boys who like to get muddy. But just let them dig and hoe and play in
the dirt while you're working in the garden. The next activity that works well
for kids is to have them fill your seed starting trays with soil. Again this
plays to kids instincts to want to play in the dirt and this lets them do it in a
constructive way. So just give them your pots or your
flats or whatever you need filled give them some tools that are a good size for
their hands and tell them to fill up the trays. And then the fun part is once they
get the trays all filled with dirt they get to water them in- saturate the soil.
Which every kid that I've ever met loves any excuse to play in water so they
really enjoy that as well. Now if you have kids that are a little bit older
they can actually help with sowing the seed flats. So we're doing peppers here
and this is my 8 year old. She's, she's an old hand at this she's been
helping me for a while. So we just kind of made the little divots for her and I told
her to put 1 to 2 seeds in each cell and she's content to just help me sow these
seed flats. Kids get just as excited checking on seedlings as grown-ups do!
This is my little Bubbyman- he loves to come out to the greenhouse with me every
single day and check on all the progress of the seedlings. So you can see he's
just peeking in on everything and once we see some sprouts it's his job to take
the lids off and he's also checking to see if anything needs watered while he's
doing this process- and he's pretty good a it. Ok we've got one more over there.
How's that one looking? Anything yet? Oh you're right, you're right
there's little tinies in there! Another idea to get kids more excited about gardening
is to give them their own little space-- whether it's a corner of the garden or a
container or a little bed. So this little raised bed here is going to be her
garden this spring. And, I want you to... It is? Yeah! I decided the other day that I was gonna
give you this spot because it's an easy spot. But I want to know what you're most
excited about planting. I want to try to plant some tulips. Some tulips. What else?
Strawberries! Any vegetables that you want to grow? Peas! A passionflower! Yeah we could try
planting one of those outside this spring. As I mentioned before kids love every
opportunity to play with water so I highly encourage you to get some kiddie
sized watering cans and anytime any of your pots or flats or seedlings or
anything needs watered let them do this job. Let them fill up the watering can
with the hose. They they love playing with the water and they love feeling
like they're helping. Okay Little Miss what are we gonna do with those peas? We're going to plant them!
Okay let's get going, let's get planting. So a really good activity for kids, even
I have my four-year-old do this with a little more supervision, but if you have
any large seeded items: peas, beans, corn, squash, melons, those types of things--
seeds that are bigger and easier to handle are really good to let kids plant.
You can have them dig the little furrows and then just show them how far apart to
space them. She's been doing this for so long I don't even have to tell her
anymore how to space everything. But as long as
the seeds are easy to handle kids usually really enjoy doing
this job and it is fairly easy for them to do.
And finally if it's just too yucky to get outside and if you are like our
household and have just a ton of seed and garden catalogs sitting around that
you're no longer using let the kids go through and cut out the beautiful
pictures. I mean they they really are drawn to these lovely full-color
pictures of fruits and vegetables and flowers. They can cut these out they can
make collages with them. There's all kinds of different ways that you can use
the pictures from these gardening catalogs, but I've found with my kids
they really enjoy doing this. And the other thing that we use the catalogs for,
and we usually do this actually at the beginning of the gardening season, is- I
let the kids go through all the catalogs and make their own little wish lists. So
they always see mom doing this and of course they kind of want to mimic
whatever you're doing, but I just let them go through and circle whatever they
are drawn to whatever they think they want to grow this coming year. And then I
try to work with them on incorporating some of those things into either the
main garden or the little space that they've been allotted for their own
gardens. We hope you like our garden ideas!Well we do we hope you got some good ideas we hope that you and your
kids are able to get out in the garden. Whether you're on quarantine or Spring
Break or just enjoying the garden in general. Thanks for watching and we'll
see you next time! Say bye guys. Bye!