National Children’s Gardening Week

National Children’s Gardening Week supports UK children’s charity Greenfingers, dedicated to providing magical gardens for children in hospices suffering from life-limiting illnesses.

Children’s Gardening Week takes place annually during the ‘warm’ week at the end of May. Gardening is a fantastic way to spend some quality time with your children and not only do kids love the great outdoors, but the fresh air is also good for their mental health and overall wellbeing.

Gardening provides plenty of fun and interesting opportunities for children, and it’s good for their development. Here we look at the benefits of gardening for your kids.

Teaches responsibility

Planning, digging, planting and watering plants teaches children responsibility and patience, knowing that if you take good care of something, it will flourish. It’s good for children to know that plants don’t grow overnight, children will learn to be patient and check on their plants regularly until they sprout, and it will make the process even more exciting!

Encourages healthy eating

It’s important for children to know where their food comes so that they can make wise food choices in the future. It can be a real struggle trying to get children to eat vegetables, but encouraging children to grow their own in the garden will give them more of an interest to try them. Eating the produce they’ve helped to grow will give children a sense of achievement.

Improves numeracy skills

Gardening requires some numeracy skills from counting how many seeds you have to measuring how far apart to plant seeds. Planting is a great way to encourage children to count and gets them familiar with measuring especially in inches and centimetres.

Sensory development

Planting in the garden is a great way of stimulating your child’s senses of touch, sound, sight, smell and taste. Children love getting messy so giving them a chance to dig, bury and pat down the soil provides a fun activity for them and they’ll feel excited about waiting to see something eventually grow.

Improves physical activity

Working and playing in the garden is a great way for your children to get some excise and absorb some vitamin D. Picking up seeds, pulling up weeds and digging is good for developing upper body strength.

How to get involved in National Children’s Gardening Week?

For resources, activities and how to get involved, visit www.childrensgardeningweek.co.uk where you can find out how to entertain your little ones and get them excited about gardening.

There are plenty of free how-tos and printable instructions available. You’ll be able to learn how to create pot stack planters, cress heads, grass caterpillars and so much more!