As we transition to warmer weather, a fun and practical way to ensure your kids spend time outside is to start a garden. Gardening is challenging and rewarding for people of all ages. In this article, we are discussing the benefits of starting a family garden.
Benefits of Gardening for Families and Children
1) Gardening Gets Kids Outside
Although temperatures are still too cold for planting outside, if you are going to garden, there is a lot of preparation to do that should begin soon. Here is a helpful calendar of gardening events from the University of Michigan.
While it might not quite be time to put seeds in the ground in Michigan, you and your family can start planning and preparing your garden right away. That means your kids can start getting outside to prep your yard even before spring officially begins.
Some vegetables can be planted now, so they can begin growing indoors.
2) Gardening Is Exercise
Gardening is a great exercise for adults and children alike. In fact, children can burn as much as five hundred calories per hour digging holes, pulling weeds, watering, spreading fertilizer, and other horticultural activities.
3) Gardening Helps Reinforce STEM
Every STEM subject is involved in growing food. From determining the amount of sunlight available in your yard to developing systems that deliver a steady supply of water, your children can employ what they are learning in science, math, technology, and engineering.
As parents, you can help ensure that you are reinforcing these subjects as you prepare and develop your garden. You can ask your teacher for specifics about how to use your horticultural efforts to teach STEM.
4) Gardening Develops Responsibility
Much like having pets, a garden requires daily attention. It needs food, water, and to be protected from threats like pests and weeds. Skipping a single day might be all it takes to cause trouble among your precious plants.
The amount of work they put into growing fruit and vegetables will give your children the kind of buy-in that ensures they won’t want to miss a day in the garden. By the end of the season, they will get to reap the benefits of their hard work, learning about delayed gratification and how investing in something today can yield great results tomorrow.
5) Gardening Is a Fun Challenge
As you know, growing a garden involves much more than just planting seeds and watching plants grow. You must tend the garden daily to make sure it has every opportunity to yield fruit and vegetables. It can be a fun challenge for your whole family.
- You kids will help devise strategies to protect plants from animals and critters.
- Your kids will help identify signs of pest infestations and take steps to prevent them from doing damage.
- Your kids will compete against the weeds that try to take nutrients from their precious plants.
- Your kids will love to take steps to make your plants grow healthy and strong.
6) Gardening Encourages Eating Healthy Food
By the time your garden begins to bear fruit and vegetables, you won’t have to fight your kids to eat them. Studies suggest that children are much more inclined to eat healthy food when they grow it themselves. You know, of course, after they put their effort and sweat into tending the garden, they will definitely want to reap the benefits of eating what they grow.
7) Gardening Involves the Whole Family
Growing a garden in your yard involves every member of the family. It is an activity you will do together and reap the benefits of together. From the smallest child to teenagers, you will grow together and bear fruit just like your garden.
At St. Paul Lutheran School, we are a family of Christ-centered educators who want to see your family grow. Our school is committed to help children develop their full potential as God's creation as we:
- TEACH children to serve God and others.
- EQUIP children with knowledge and skills for living.
- ACKNOWLEDGE each child's uniqueness.
- CREATE an active, Christ-centered learning environment.
- HONOR GOD through active church participation.
If you would like to know more about our private Christian school in Northville, Michigan, contact us today.