Gardening with Kids

Kids and gardening are a natural combination. There's dirt, it's messy, the textures are interesting; you can grow food; there are bright colors, interesting smells, even some water play. Kids like to garden until it becomes a chore, or has too many rules. Plants and healthy soil attract insects (some pests, some not), spiders, lizards, frogs, toads, birds, worms, and interesting fungus, bacteria, & other creatures. My dad and I built a greenhouse when I was a young teenager, and one evening I found a foot-long slender worm-like creature with a shovel-shaped head snaking through the stepstones. Have you ever seen a "shovel-headed slug?" It's a type of flatworm. Gardening with kids presents so many different teaching opportunities that parents often forget it can just be fun, too. Kids today learn a lot about the environment at school. Your garden can be a microcosm of the environment, with lots of opportunities to compare what is going on there with what they see in farms, parks, and wild areas.