Introduction
Homeschooling has been a popular choice for many families as they try to make sense of the constantly shifting educational landscape in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While homeschooling has its obstacles, it also gives you the chance to customize your child’s education and include a wide range of fun activities that might not be feasible in a conventional classroom.
Gardening is one such pastime that may be both enjoyable and instructive. Gardening has many advantages, from encouraging physical activity and introducing kids to nature to imparting important lessons on responsibility, patience, and problem-solving. Additionally, gardening can be an effective teaching tool for teaching language arts, science, and math in a memorable and hands-on approach.
There are endless methods to incorporate gardening into your homeschooling curriculum, regardless of whether you have a large yard or just a little balcony. Gardening may offer a range of chances for learning and exploration, from growing vegetables and monitoring the plant life cycle to studying the ecology of nearby insects and animals.
In addition to offering advice and resources for getting started, this article will look at some of the several ways you can incorporate gardening into your homeschooling curriculum. Whether you’re an expert gardener or a total beginner, we wish to encourage you to embrace gardening’s joys and advantages as a useful tool for homeschooling your kids.
Ways You Can Incorporate Gardening Into Your Homeschooling Curriculum
Let me provide some suggestions for teaching gardening at home. There is material for younger students as well as for those in kindergarten and primary school.
Maintaining your home-school garden may be an amazing morning routine that can grow into bigger tasks and even lifelong loves.
Grow a bean plant
Growing beans is a simple technique to demonstrate a plant’s development to the smallest. You have probably conducted this straightforward experiment at some point throughout your academic career.
Only a larger glass, cotton swab, and bean seeds are required.
What does a plant need?
Another experiment that will build a solid gardening foundation is this one. It is suitable for use with young children as well as early primary students.
Adults are aware that plants require both light and water to develop. Kids don’t, though. One of those facts that seems so clear to us that we fail to remember that we ever knew it.
Three pots of the same plant variety are required. Your child will plant one and water it in a well-lit area. The second one will also be set up in a well-lit area, but it will not receive any water. Plant 3 will receive water, but it will also be protected by a box. The initial plant is the only one that will sprout.
With this experiment, you may introduce the scientific method to young elementary school students while also having them write their hypotheses and the idea of a variable.
Kitchen herbs
Herbs for cooking are simple to obtain and grow. To begin with, you can purchase a few little ones from your neighborhood grocery store and let your child take care of them. Include more meals that use the types of herbs you keep on your windowsill, and ask your child to chop the quantities you need for cooking.
With your preschooler, you can play games by having them taste or smell the herbs and guess the names.
Plant growing kits
The first step to a real home-school garden is a set of children’s gardening tools. They save you a ton of time in purchasing, planning, and preparation because they are ready to use and entertaining and informative.
Vegetable seeds would be the place to start, as it’s incredibly satisfying for kids to grow their own food.
Working with seeds
Although starting a home-school garden from seedlings is simpler, you should eventually teach your child the entire process.
Although you may grow a plant from any seed, including those from lemons, avocados, and papayas, it’s best to start with something that develops fairly quickly.
If one of you is a Mexican, therefore you have a large collection of chili plants that were started from seeds of plants you purchased and consumed.
After being planted in a small container, a chili seed takes approximately a week to begin developing and then expands astonishingly quickly. Depending on your climate, you can get your first chilies in about 4 months.
Water erosion experiment
It’s important to implant in your child the knowledge that plants are not only attractive and delicious, but also vital to the health of our ecosystems.
The vegetation that covers the soil is crucial because it stops soil erosion. You understand what I mean if you reside close to the coast.
Learn composting
By include composting activities in your homeschool curriculum, you can help your child learn valuable gardening skills while also promoting plant growth and cutting down on household trash. You can perform it in your kitchen, too!
You only need soil, biodegradable products, and an indoor compost bin. Before placing the dishes in the dishwasher, instruct them to place eggshells, apple cores, and banana peels in the compost.
Books about gardening
If your children enjoy reading, it’s a wonderful idea to include gardening books in your morning basket for homeschooling. They can add to whatever activity you two are already doing in or just broaden their gardening knowledge.
Favorites:
- From Seed to Plant, by Gail Gibbons
- The Tiny Seed: With seeded paper to grow your own flowers!, by Eric Carle
- National Geographic Readers: Seed to Plant, by Kristin Rattini
- Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt, by Kate Messner
- A Green Kid’s Guide to Composting (A Green Kid’s Guide to Gardening!), by Richard Lay
- The Best-Ever Step-by-Step Kid’s First Gardening, by Jenny Hendy
- Gardening with Emma: Grow and Have Fun: A Kid-to-Kid Guide, by Emma and Steven Biggs
Conclusion
A homeschooling curriculum that includes gardening can offer many different kinds of chances for learning and exploration. It may be used to teach a range of disciplines and skills, including science, math, language arts, and sustainability, and is a fun, hands-on way to teach kids about the natural world. Children can acquire useful skills while having fun and interacting with nature by starting small, using internet resources, obtaining hands-on experience, and keeping a garden journal. Families can collaborate on a project while gardening, strengthening their sense of community and teamwork. All things considered, gardening in a homeschooling curriculum is a terrific approach to make learning enjoyable, interesting, and rewarding.