Have you wanted a fun way to teach Gardening to your kids?  Maybe you would like to learn more about it yourself?  Come along and join us on a garden adventure to learn about how to grow a garden.

You might be surprised to learn that you don’t have to live on a farm to have a garden.    There are lots of places we can grow things.  You can have a garden right on your window sill.  If you only have a patio or balcony, you can grow garden plants right in flower pots.  If you have a small yard, you can grow a few plants in a spot out in the open, or choose a more hidden location near a building.  If you really have a knack and desire for gardening though, you can really get creative and grow plants all over the place.  I have seen folks grow cucumbers around their mailbox even!

If you don’t have room for a garden, a fun thing to do with your kids is to join a CSA and visit the farm and see how the produce is grown and harvested.  Usually a CSA will have a box of produce for you to pick up every week of the growing season.  This would be great exposure for the children to see how the garden changes and what it produces as the season goes along, not to mention the delicious produce you will have to use for the week.  If you would like to know more about CSA’s in your local area, check the Local Harvest website at
http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

I love to garden!  For many years, (most of them before the past five years) my life revolved around my gardens.  From planning in the winter, to prepping, planting, weeding, and caring during the spring and early summer to bountiful harvests in the summer and fall.  Top it off with canning, dehydrating, growing in a hoop house or on the window sill in winter, sprouting, and gift giving, and your gardening can be year around pleasure.

But moving away from my farm, renting a house where the yard was off limits (no kidding you could use the house but the “association” owns the yard, that was a bad choice for a country girl like me to live) , and gardening while pregnant, and with toddlers, then buying a house where the yard is pure red clay and doesn’t want to grow anything green, I have been faced with a wide range of challenges.

Today’s post is about including my kids in planning a garden and learning about gardens for this year’s growing season.  My childrens ages are 2, 3, 6, 8, and 10.  We will be reading books, reviewing some videos, using seed catalogs, preparing our garden plans, prepping our garden boxes, planting, tending and watering, and hopefully harvesting something this year.

In addition to the above mentioned activities, we have lots of other activities planned.

For my younger children, we will also do some fun preschool type activities.  We plan to make a garden
activity bin, printables, role playing, and more.

For my older children, we will apply some hands on science in this learning adventure.   I will post
website links for you in upcoming articles as they are posted.   We have a garden adventure science kit
too that helps point out specific science lessons related to gardening.  Most of these you will be able to
repeat yourself with out the science kit.  So stay tuned and we will show you step by step what we are
doing.

Here are just a few of the supplies I have been gathering up that we will be using.

We are joining up with a fun learning adventure at the Homeschool Village.  Lots of families will be linking up once a month to share what they have been doing and learning during the month that relates to gardens.   This challenge will run from March through July.

Please join us too!  The garden challenge is open to everyone.  No garden necessary!  You can grow in a container on the window sill if need by.  Don’t worry about it.   The point is to have fun learning something knew about growing things.  What better way to get your kids involved in some fun learning adventures and possibly grow something yummy to enjoy in the process.

Find all the details about the Garden Challenge and the link ups at the Homeschool Village website:

http://www.thehomeschoolvillage.com/2011/03/hsv-garden-challenge-qa.html

Want some fun printables to do with your tots, prek, and kindergarten learners with a garden theme?

Jolanthe from Homeschool Creations has some wonderful free printables, and a garden learning unit, that go along with this learning adventure just perfectly!  Click here for the printables:

Garden Preschool Printables Pack

Itsy Bitsy Learners has also made a Printable Garden Pack.

We acquired these planting boxes to sit on top of our red clay yard.  The yard is so hard, it doesn’t even want to grow grass, though a few patches have managed to grow.  The children had fun helping me follow the directions to assemble our boxes.  We got some in black, and some in green that can hold a netting or cloth over the top if needed.

 
 

Then we added our top soil, sand, compost, and lime to fill our boxes with a growing medium, that hopefully is better suited than our red clay for growing a garden.

Stay tuned for more gardening adventures with Weiser Academy!!!

This post will be linked up at
Science Sunday
Link and Learn
We Play
Homeschool Village