Critters, Creativity, and Kids in Community Gardens
Note: This blog was written by Marit Olson, Garden City Harvest’s Youth Harvest Project Coordinator.
It’s the growing season and your community garden plot needs regular attention and love, and so do your children currently stuck at home. Fortunately, kids benefit from time spent outside, exploring, and working with the soil, as much as adults do. Here are a variety of activities for kids of all ages to keep them active and engaged in the garden while you get a chance to work!
Before heading out to the garden remind your kids to:
Respect all living things. (Plants, people, animals, bugs)
Ask permission before you pick.
Keep a calm body. Watch your step.
Have fun!
For the Explorer:
Garden Critter Safari - Send your children on their own garden safari, encouraging them to explore the world of unique insects, arthropods, spiders, within the garden ecosystem. Encourage searching under rocks, in leaf piles, and in the compost, and remember to look closely!
How many different kinds of spiders can they see? Where does the trail of ants lead? Where do they find the most insects? Use a journal for field notes, drawings, and observations, just like scientists in the field. Reminder - these critters help our garden grow, so keep them safe and always return them to where they were found!
The Engineer:
Build a Habitat - It’s up to your young engineer to design a habitat for the critter of their choice. Keep in mind living things need Food, Water, Shelter, and Space to survive. Utilize found materials, make mud bricks, use grass to tie together sticks, decorate with flowers. The only limit is your child’s imagination (and the free space available in your plot). Have youth explore their creative side by adding leaf rain-water catchment systems or hidden rooms. Or encourage youth to turn toward more practical design to design and create an Insect Hotel.
The Competitor:
Weeding Olympics - The battle against the quack grass is on, and one victor will reign supreme. The challenge, to pull out the longest quack grass root without it breaking off. Keep measurements and compare between weeks, or set up siblings to compete. Perhaps the winner gets to pick the season’s first strawberry! Variations: the search for the deepest dandelion tap root, a race for the largest weed pile in 10 minutes. Make sure to initiate Olympics with a round of weed identification so only weeds get pulled.
The Creator:
Leaf Rubbings - What makes leaves green? Chlorophyll! And that chlorophyll can be rubbed out of leaves and used as a green pigment for art. Simply choose some extra green leaves, ball them up, and rub directly onto paper. Do different leaves make different greens? Try it out! Bring extra markers or crayons along to make a full colorful piece of artwork!
Design your own insect using found garden pieces, leaves, flowers and sticks. Every insect has a head, thorax, and abdomen, 6 legs, eyes, antenna, and some even have wings! Glue their insect onto a piece of paper or cardboard for artwork to take home!
The Observer:
Magic Spot Journals - Gardens are the perfect place to find some peace and consistency in the midst of the unknown. Have your young one choose a “Magic Spot” to visit every time you come to the garden. Encourage them to sit along and observe using all their senses (except maybe taste). What does it smell like? Feel like? Sound like? What changes do they notice every time they return to their spot? Bring along a journal to draw or write out thoughts and feelings. For a fun craft project help your child craft their own Nature Journal before heading out to the garden. It might take a while for kids to get used to sitting still, but magic spots can be a great way to introduce your youngster to mindfulness, and give you some quiet time gardening.
Find the Rainbow - Younger kids love exploring the variety of colors and textures in gardens! Encourage them to collect all the colors of the rainbow. This might be a fun time to explore community garden beds and observe what other gardeners are doing. Remind them to ask before picking.
The Storyteller:
One of my very favorite garden books is Doreen Cronin’s Diary of a Worm! Watch the story on youtube before heading out to the garden. Once outside encourage your child to find and observe some worms. How are garden worms similar to Worm in the story? What is their favorite garden critter? Have your budding author write their own Diary of… (a Bee? Spider? Ant? etc.) using their personal observations.