Fun gardening activities for kids. You may also enjoy this post on planting a container garden with kids.
Spring is here, and gardening is a wonderful way to spend time outside with your children! We have been reading The Curious Garden, which is one of my all-time favorite picture books for kids. This wonderful book is guaranteed to inspire you to get outside and plant something! To go along with this book, I am sharing some gardening fun for kids inspiration – simple ways to garden with your kids from spring through summer!
Gardening Fun for Kids
In The Curious Garden, a boy named Liam lives in a city where there is nothing green. The city is so grey and drab that everyone spends their time indoors – except for Liam. One day, Liam comes across some plants growing on an abandoned railroad. Liam nourishes the plants, and over time the city is transformed! This book is inspired by the real-life High Line Park in New York City! The book is wonderful – I read it to a group of eight-year-old boys last night, and they were absolutely captivated.
I find that children are naturally attracted to gardening and plants – it is the parents who are overwhelmed! Here are some simple and fun ways you can garden with your kids:
Plant a Seed
You really can plant just about any seed and start a garden! Yesterday we planted basil after reading this book with Johnny and a group of his friends – that is what is in the seemingly empty cup in the photo above.
The plant with leaves is a Wisteria plant that my ten-year-old daughter Emma is growing. She saved a seed from the tree that is in the middle of our building courtyard, and then germinated the seed by placing it in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel and taping that to the window. She decided to transplant it after Johnny planted his basil seed – hopefully it continues to thrive!
Grow Grass
I had originally planned for Johnny and his friends to grow grass – a very fun planting activity for children! I switched to basil because I couldn’t find any seeds in the stores I checked that weren’t coated in fertilizer. I know you CAN get them, because I have found them before, but I needed seeds for yesterday and basil is equally fun to grow – especially since you can use the leaves to make your own pizza or pasta sauce!
Start Spring Plants
It might be too cold to plant outside where you live, but you can start seedlings inside! The kids loved doing this when we lived in Massachusetts – especially since I always let them help me choose which plants to add to our garden. You can use this life cycle of a green bean plant toy to help children track the growth of plants.
Grow a Fairy Garden
Someday I hope to put together a proper terrarium; in the meantime my kids love creating fairy gardens out of whatever plants we have growing! My kids are particularly fond of building fairy villages around tomato plants; trees also make wonderful foundations for fairy villages.
More Gardening Ideas for Families
Gardening activities for families to enjoy together.
Garden Book Activities for Children Everywhere
Here are some of our favorite gardening activities for kids to go along with one of my favorite pictures books, The Curious Garden.
How to Plant a Container Garden with Kids
Tips for planting a container garden – what type of garden to set up, and plants you might want to try when working with kids.
6 Surprising Health Benefits of Growing Plants
Gardens are beautiful. They are healthy too, including in ways you might not expect. Discover the benefits of growing plants.
Tips for Using Recycled Materials in the Garden - Upcycled Gardening
Combine green recycling with green gardening through these fun ideas for using recycled materials in the garden.
Simple Experiments for Kids: Plants and sunlight
Did you know that plants crave sunlight so much that they will bend to follow it? Kids love this simple visual phototropism plant science experiment, and it’s one of our favorite simple experiments for kids.
Plant Biology for Kids & Garden Themed Learning Activities
A simple introduction to  plant biology for kids, plus more garden-themed learning activities that pair beautifully with picture books listed in the post.
Gardening With Kids: Tips for Planting Tomatoes
Tips for planting tomatoes with kids, especially in climates where you can get surprise cold snaps in spring.
Tips for Gardening With Kids
Helpful tips for gardening with kids, plus more gardening activities for kids. These ideas work with all ages and gardens of all sizes!
Shamrock Gardens: Fun Ways to Create and Grow Clover
Clover is easy and fun to grow!
Growing Grass and Other Earth Day Learning Activities for Preschoolers
Grass is easy and fun to grow, making it the perfect preschooler science activity. This post also features other Earth Day themed learning activities for preschoolers.
What are your favorite ways to enjoy gardening with kids?
Today’s post is part of Trisha’s wonderful Storybook Science series. Click on the button above to follow along throughout the series! This is my third contribution to the series – you can find my other posts here:
Do you have a picture book about gardening that we should read?
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MaryAnne lives is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
Great post! I feel privileged to live in Africa where we can grow things SO easily without any fertilizer or anything. It’s wonderful!
I love The Curious Garden too! I can’t wait until we can start our garden. It’s nice outside today but it’s supposed to snow on Sunday so I think we have a few more weeks before we can plant anything here in Boston!
I’m not so much a parent who’s intimidated, as a parent who has no skill. I’ve tried several times to garden, but I’m an indifferent gardener at best. So my gardens are rather lacking. My daughter however seems to have inherited the gardening skill from her grandma.
Hooray for one green thumb in the family!
I’m excited to check out this book, and to get those seedlings started inside. Growing things with kids is the best!!
We have been adding lots of plants to our garden – it’s hard work but makes us all happy to enjoy the results. :) A fun way to get plants is via local online classified ads.
Gardening can be so much fun! I was raised in the city where we did not have our garden, but I am happy to have our backyard now!
The book sounds amazing! I love that it’s inspired by a true story. It’s a great book to get kids interested in gardening.