Written By Paige Vandiver
If your kids are home from school due to COVID-19, you may be looking for online resources to keep the education train rolling while making sure your kids are having fun and getting outdoors during this stressful time. We’re here to help!
There are a gazillion reasons to teach your children gardening skills at an early age! Tending to plants gives your child:
- Physical exercise. Gardening is a great workout for the whole family!
- A sense of responsibility and reward. They’ll love to watch the garden grow and feel a sense of accomplishment when they see the first flower bloom or pick their first tomato!
- A love and appreciation for nature that they will carry through their entire lives.
- A fun way to practice math. You can turn gardening into a math exercise by asking things like: How much water will you give the plant? How many seeds should you plant? How many inches are there between each plant?
- A creative way to do some family bonding. Start a family tradition by planning and caring for your garden together each year!
- A love of healthy eating using foods picked fresh from their own garden. Your child might look forward to a salad with ingredients they can go outside and pick themselves!
Here are 3 of our very favorite fun and interactive online resources to help you teach your child about plants and gardening!
Bloom! Plants to the Rescue! By Scholastic
Scholastic is the largest publisher of children’s books and it’s no surprise that they have created some amazing online resources for home learning. This module for Grades 6-8 includes a cool video describing the history of plants, a trivia game, and some interactive drag-and-drop games that show your child the different parts of a plant and what happens when a plant is unhealthy. This website also has a healthy number of links to additional educational lessons!
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KidsGardening.Org
If you want to really “dig deep”, kidsgardening.org has some very detailed and specific gardening lessons for children of all ages. Topics such as Edible Landscaping, Rain Gardens, Prehistoric Plants, or Exploring Tree Rings are organized by age into nifty lesson plans, so you can choose to do anything from a 1-hour learning session to a 4-8 week course.
BrainPOP jr.
BrainPOP provides playful, engaging online learning tools for children and is offering free access for schools and families affected by school closures due to COVID-19. BrainPOP jr. has a module on plants that will definitely “sprout” your child’s curiosity for gardening!
Gardening together can promote mental health and balance for the entire family during these uncertain times. We hope these resources will be useful as you navigate staying in your family bubble together. If you have other suggestions for online gardening resources for kids, send us a message! We’d love to connect with you!
Curbside Pickup is Now Available at Stockslagers Greenhouse & Garden Center.
In an effort to keep our employees and customers safe and healthy from Covid-19, we are closed until further notice.
In the meantime, we’ve opened curbside pickup so you can grab potting soil, vegetable plants, herbs, flowers, and other items to get your growing season started.
