Why Teach Your Children How to Grow a Garden?

Children today are so engrossed in their video games and sports, music and movies, and other technology-based activities that going back to nature often takes a backseat, if not totally forgotten. Well, it's about time that you introduce your children to gardening and enjoy the following benefits.

Respect for Life

We wish to impart respect for life in our children despite the bloodshed and violence in our society. Gardening allows parents the opportunity to teach their children the value of life most especially how each one is interdependent and interrelated. Indeed, you can teach your children by example how each creature has its place on Earth, no matter how ugly, how little and how useless it may appear. For example, your children will appreciate the importance of caterpillars and bees in the garden even if these insects seem to be pests at first.

Reinforced Learning

In schools, the focus is often on the theory of life such as in the subjects of biology, chemistry and physics. With gardening, however, your children learn to apply the theory into practice, thanks to various activities like fertilizing the plants, watering the seedlings, and even positioning the plants to get optimal growth.

This way, you are able to provide a venue for them to better understand the theories being taught in school. For example, if their lesson is about photosynthesis, you can teach them about the importance of placing the greenhouse in the sunniest part of the yard. Plus, you definitely cannot beat gardening as a method to teach your children the values of recycling as well as environmental protection. Teach them compost and organic gardening for this purpose.

Relaxed Mindset

Let's face it. Successful gardening requires a relaxed mindset especially when tending to highly-sensitive plants. This is because a worried mind can overdo or underdo gardening activities like pulling on the plants too hard out of anger, watering the vegetables too little because you are in a hurry, and even making a mistake on the fertilizer mix. With gardening, your children can learn to relax and just focus on what is at hand. There is something good to be said about tending to plants in terms of its therapeutic value, which your angst-ridden children can definitely benefit from.

And of course, there is also the fact that when your children are arguing amongst themselves, you can just dispatch them into the weed garden to vent their frustrations on pulling out weeds. You can also make weeding as a form of punishment, which should be more productive than the traditional "go to your room" or "sit in a corner". Just make sure not to place them in the tomato patch as you don't want your crop to find its way into hands and then into faces, bodies and clothes.

Ramp Up on Health

Last but not least, your children will be able to get their exercise without exposure to possible injuries such as in sports activities like soccer. As any gardener knows, the many activities of gardening burns calories, requires muscle and demands physical fitness.

Gardening for children alongside their parents provides for many benefits, not least of which is the opportunity to bond as a family unit. The fact that mental, physical and social health are also benefits almost appear secondary to this benefit.

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