Garden Activities For Kids

Cultivate a love of gardening in kids of all ages with garden activities for kids that you can do at home.  Here are some fun ways to defeat boredom with enriching activities that will inspire little gardeners everywhere.

Plant a Pizza Garden

If you have pizza lovers in the house, why not plant a pizza garden! Section off a small parcel of garden space or grab some containers and plant all of the fixings for a perfect pizza. Some suggested essential seeds to plant in your pizza garden include basil, oregano, parsley, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers. Nurture the seeds and watch them grow. Then, come harvest time, you can have a family pizza-making party made with fresh ingredients from the garden.

Grow Your Own Fort

Building a fort is a quintessential childhood activity, so why not incorporate one into your garden landscape? Not only will it teach kids how to plant seeds, care of them, and watch them grow, but they will also enjoy endless hours of fun all season long.

Sunflower House

Grow a circle of sunflowers to create a magnificent hideaway in your garden or yard. Plant sunflower seeds a couple of inches apart in the shape of a large circle, leaving one or more larger spacings that will act as doorways when the sunflowers are fully grown. With time and patience, the ring of seeds will transform into a circular fort full of wonder that can be used for imaginative play. After an entire season of enjoyment, the sunflowers will die away, but the seeds can be harvested and saved for another summer fort for the following year.

Teepee Hideaway

Create a shady enclosure for the kids right in the vegetable garden that doubles as a climbing structure for pole beans. Children can even grab some quick healthy snacks straight from their living hideaway once the fort is completely filled in.

Supplies

You’ll need a few supplies to get started with a teepee hideaway.

• 4-6 garden poles/ stakes that are at least 6 feet in length
• Twine
• Garden Soil
• Pole Beans

How to Build It

1. Lean your garden poles toward each other so that they are evenly spread at the base and bundled together at the top.
2. Use your twine to bind the poles together at the peak firmly.
3. Settle the base of the poles into the ground and pack some additional soil around the bases of each pole to secure them in the soil.
4. If you’d like a more secluded enclosure, wrap the remaining twine between the poles at intervals of approximately one foot. This will give the growing vines support and provide the tendrils something to latch onto.
5. Plant 3-4 seeds at the base of each pole and watch them grow and cover the teepee structure.

Make a Mini Herb Garden out of Eggshells

Garden activities for kids can start in the kitchen. Did you know that broken eggshells can make great seed starting pods? Save your egg crates and cracked eggshells and create a little starter herb garden!  Add some potting mix to each of the eggshell halves and plant some seeds in the soil and water them. Place in a sunny spot, and before you know it, you will have fragrant and tasty herbs flourishing. Plant the seedlings in a bigger container or out in the garden as they grow bigger.

Regrow Kitchen Scraps

Did you know you can regrow some of your favorite food from bits that we would normally throw away? Garden activities for kids can go from table to garden and back to table again. Previously we wrote about 18 fruits and vegetables that you can regrow from kitchen scraps. This fun project can start with saving seed from foods like tomatoes, strawberries, citrus, and avocados to sprout new plants or taking scraps of carrot, lettuce, beets, or onions to start growing greens.

How do you get started? One of the easiest veggies you can regrow with your kids is celery.

1. Cut off the base of your celery (where all the stalks join).
2. Put it in a bowl with a small amount of warm water and place that in direct sunlight. Change out water as needed. Within a week, leaves should appear & thicken at the base.
3. Keep the celery growing in water or transplant it into a pot or out in the garden and you’ll soon have fresh celery!

Make a Wormery

Dive into some soil science and create a wormery which will allow you to watch how wiggly worms penetrate the soil, mix things up, and help things grow.

How to Make It

1. Cut the top portion of a two-liter soda bottle off.
2. Alternate adding a couple of inches of soil with a thin layer of light sand. Repeat this layering process until the soil reaches a couple of inches from the top.
3. Find a couple of earthworms in your garden and carefully place them in your soil-filled bottle.
4. Cover the open end of the bottle with plastic wrap and poke some holes in the wrap.
5. Each day, remove the plastic wrap and add a couple of tablespoons of water to the soil and replace the cover.
6. Watch for changes in the soil composition over the next two weeks. You should see a mixing of the layers and worm tunnels that facilitated it.
7. Carefully return the worms and the soil contents to the garden bed.

Start a Compost Pile with Kids

It’s never too early to teach children about the importance of protecting our Earth and doing our part to reduce climate change. Starting your own compost pile is a great place to start.  All that you need to get started are some kitchen scraps and a corner of the yard that is unoccupied. Children will be fascinated that they can turn trash into treasure, and your garden will be happier for it.

Paint Garden Rocks for Plant Markers

Gather smooth stones from around the yard and use acrylic paint to paint them to look like the vegetables that you plan on growing in your garden!  Use them as plant markers in your vegetable garden.

Make a Grass Head Friend

Sprinkle a few seeds of grass into the foot of a nylon stocking. Fill the nylon stocking with a cup of potting soil and tie off at the end of the soil ball. You can use permanent markers to draw a face on the nylon and then place the ball at the top of a cup or glass so that it rests on top of the rim. Water the soil ball regularly. Soon your grass head friend will sprout a lovely head of year for you to let grow or trim as you please.

Read a Children’s Book About Gardening

Cozy up with a children’s book about gardening and help nurture a child’s love of reading as well as an appreciation of nature. Grab a blanket or a hammock and settle in for some stories that will inspire you to get your hands dirty and start planting.

Share The Garden Love