Kid-Friendly Garden Activities

Kids have a natural affinity for plants and animals. As we get older, it’s easy to stop seeing the magic of plants growing or birds flying overhead. But for children, watching the day-by-day progress of seedlings grow, or caring for a houseplant is still a wondrous activity. In many ways, they’re secretly aching to be in contact with the earth—as are we—and we can let them do so with this list of kid-friendly gardening projects! 

 

Start Seedlings 

This is the perfect gardening activity to start inside during the winter and carry on outside in the spring. Late February and early March is already time to start tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, squash, and other warm-season crops indoors. Set your kids up with seeds, trays, and potting soil—and let them grow the seedlings that you’ll use in the vegetable garden this year!  

 

Indoor Herb Garden 

Who said you have to wait until spring to start enjoying fresh herbs? They can be grown at any time, and your kids would be thrilled to help you with this activity. Start them from seed now, and in as little as six weeks, you’ll have baby herbs. When it’s warm enough, your kids can transplant them outside into the garden. 

 

New Houseplant 

From stuffed animals to dolls and imaginary friends, from a very young age, children are eager to have companions to take care of. Bring them by the greenhouse and let them choose their own houseplant, which they can personally look after. Low-maintenance choices such as the snake plant, spider plant, jade plant, aloe vera, and pothos plants are best. 

 

Make an Insect Hotel 

Let your kids boost the habitat for beneficial insects in your garden with this simple activity. All you need is a small wood frame in the shape of a house. Inside, your kids can put hollowed-out pieces of wood, bamboo, twigs, and bark. These provide habitat for native solitary bees, ladybugs, lacewings, butterflies, and many other bugs that are essential for your garden ecosystem, and are very interesting for kids, too! 

 

Nature Sketching 

Where creativity meets nature is always a fruitful intersection for children. Let them practice their sketching skills by drawing leaves, twigs, birds, squirrels, feathers, or anything they find outside in the yard. This not only hones their eye for observation, but allows them to learn about the natural world around us, and to imagine different stories, characters, and personalities of the plants and animals outside!

 

Paint Garden Stones 

Bring out the paints and let your kids decorate stones for the garden! They can create labels to mark plants in this year’s vegetable plot or just unleash their creativity in whatever designs they imagine. Painted stones make a beautiful addition to the garden when spring comes. 

 

Make a Bird Feeder 

Connect your kids with the feathered friends in your neighborhood by making them a new bird feeder. You can do a simple project, like a pine cone smeared with peanut butter and covered in seeds. Or, you can get them to paint wooden bird feeders that hold seeds. Just remember to use wholesome nuts, seeds, and suet, rather than corn starch, corn nuts, or other sugary foods that are not good for a bird’s diet. 

 

Start a Phenology Practice

Bring your kids in touch with the wondrous seasonal changes that happen around us by starting a phenology practice. Phenology is the observation of nature through the seasons in a particular place, like your backyard or nearby park. It includes events like the arrival of migratory birds, the nesting of owls, the hatching of chicks, the emergence of leaves, the birth of insects, and the opening of flowers. The more you look, the more you see. Your kids can keep track of their observations in a creative calendar or journal. 

 

Make a Garden Journal 

Get your little ones involved in your garden this year by having them make their very own garden journal. It can be a fun activity to decorate a cover page, and create title pages for sections throughout the book. A journal can be their place to sketch nature, record phenology observations, and plot the progress of the garden—starting with the seedlings that you start as early as late winter. By harvest time, the kids will not only have learned a lot through the journaling, but will have a piece of artwork they can admire!

 

Few things go better together than children and gardens. It’s a creative place where they can grow things, connect with nature, use their imagination, and play in the dirt. All of the gardening activities on this list can be started indoors during the winter months, and carried on right in the growing season. For more inspiration, stop by our garden center in Glenside, PA!