Gitanjali Rajamani is the Founder and CEO of GreenMyLife, a gardening company based out of Bangalore. She is also a Cofounder at Farmizen, an urban mini-farm rental company.
Gardening is an important life skill. It is essential for your children to know where their food comes from and how to grow it. Gardening with children helps parents form a close bond with them and is a great way to increase the attention span of children and wean them off gadgets and the internet.
Gardening with children teaches them
Patience – when a tomato plant takes two to three months to grow and produce fruits, your child understands patience and the value of the vegetable grown. Your child would never waste food after he/she knows how long it took to grow it.
Nature and our role in it – a chance to know how we fit in nature and our responsibility towards its conservation.
Responsibility, creativity and discovery when children care for the plants they grow, innovate on methods to grow their plants better and discovery of the process of growth.
Self-confidence - when they are able to grow something on their own from scratch.
Here are some ‘Do-it-Yourself’ (DIY) projects that are related to gardening which could be fun activities to do with your kids.
Seed Bombs
Seed bombs or seed balls are basically small balls of about one to three inch diameter – made of clay, potting soil or compost and seeds. Once they have been made, and dried for 24-48 hours they are either sown or more commonly “thrown” across a stretch of land to increase the green cover. They area fun and effective way of re-seeding depleted landscapes.
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