Gardening with Kids: The Pet Alternative

Are you looking for a way to teach your child about responsibility, but don't have the time or space for a pet? Well, we all laugh at those Chia Pet commercials (you just sang the song in your head, didn't you?), but taking care of a plant can be just as rewarding as taking care of a cat, dog, fish or any other type of household pet.

There are many benefits to teaching children to have a green thumb. The time that it takes to nurture and care for a plant instills a sense of responsibility in children. But there are even greater joys and opportunities that can come from gardening with your child.

Learning Opportunities: Plants offer unlimited learning opportunities. Children who take care of plants learn how sunlight and shade affect the growth of plants. They can also delight in how plants and animals use plants and flowers to help each other grown. Planting a butterfly or hummingbird garden with your child is an interactive way to talk about pollination.

Starting a vegetable or flower garden inside from seed packets and then observing how slowly or quickly the plants grow depending upon their environment, inside versus outside, is another way to make learning fun for your child.

Experimentation: Kids love to dig and they like to create. If your yard allows, give your kids their very own children's garden where they choose the flowers and plants that will grow there. Let them pick ones that you know will thrive in your planting zone, but also let them pick plants and flowers that may struggle. Giving a child the freedom to experiment through trial and error is a major life skill that will help them become productive adults someday. Not everything always comes easy.

If you don't have the space for an outdoor garden, bring it inside. Let your children pot and plant to their hearts' delights using brightly colored pots. Plants provide much needed oxygen. So not only are you giving your children a learning experience, but you are also giving them cleaner air to breath. Two bonuses!

Promotes Healthier Eating: If a leaf of lettuce looks strange and foreign to your child and is often accompanied by a comment similar to, "Ew, gross. I'm not eating grass," then growing your own vegetables may be the answer to a hesitant eater.

It has been said that kids will more often eat what they make, so take it one step farther. Let them eat what they grown.

Plant carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, strawberries and watermelon and watch your child's food picks expand dramatically. Taking part in a family garden is interesting because all these plants grow differently, some grow in the ground, some grow on tall vines and others seem to explode overnight determined to be gianormous land octopuses.

You can also create windowsill herb gardens that will fill the house with fragrantful scents. Your little gardener will love to help you clip the clippings to go in your meal.

Fun Plants for Your Child to Raise

Here are a few examples of plants that you can get that are hardy and will provide your child with the opportunity to be hands on.

Grassheads: You can find these at your local Wal-Mart or nursery. The little grassheads are usually in the form of a dog, cat or some other animal. They have a little bowl that looks like a fish bowl and then a soil head that has seeds of grass already planted. A wick extends from the base of the head and that goes into the bowl. The soil head sits atop of the water-filled bowl and the water is absorbed through the wick. These heads grow super fast and it can be hilarious to watch your little one get excited over giving their grasshead a haircut.

Cactus: These guys are tough. They can withstand little interaction and can survive if they are not watered very often. They also come in interesting shapes, sizes and colors. Most of the time you can find these in Home Depot,Wal-Mart or any place where houseplants are sold.

Venus Flytraps: These are the more persnickety of the three examples I have. They can be hardy, but touchy. These are the plants that eat bugs. And man, it is pretty cool to watch the jaws of this plant chomp down on a bug. Our Venus Flytrap caught a daddy-long-leg just last night. But these plants can be picky eaters and if they don't consume their catch quickly they turn black and die. These types of plants can be found in the produce aisle of your local grocer and at some local nurseries.

I have found that gardening with my 5-year old is a fun experience. The joy that she gets from watching her flowers grow is satisfying. She also has to learn to deal with loss when a plant or flower doesn't do well, but loss is a life lesson. And this type of loss doesn't require a grave in the backyard or a trip down the toilet. That is the joy that I get from having a garden as a pet!

Happy Gardening!

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