3 Garden Activities for Kids With Green Fingers

If you’re in need of small garden ideas for kids, growing seedlings from toilet roll tubes is a great way to start. Neat and contained, this easy project doesn’t even call for a flower bed.

 To make them:

1. With a responsible adult wielding the scissors, make four even cuts from the base of a toilet roll tube to about a quarter of the way up.
2. Get the kids to fold the cut sections inwards to make a base, so your toilet roll tube forms a cup.
3. Now they can fill the tube with moist compost, and poke the seeds down into the soil. Repeat with the rest of the tubes until you have a mini-garden going.
4. Remind your kids to care for their seedlings by spraying them with a little water once a day.
5. When the seedlings are big enough to re-pot (check the packet to be sure), take the tubes with your new seedlings and plant them in bigger pots, or in a bed.

2. Experiment with your food cupboard

If you’re looking for indoor gardening activities for kids, look no further than your own kitchen. Why not conduct an experiment with your little ones and see what sprouts when you plant it? Here are a few things you could try growing:

• Poppy seeds (in soil – use one of the toilet roll seed pots from further up the page!)
• Coriander seeds (in soil)
• Pumpkin seeds (in soil)
• Partially sprouted potatoes (in soil)
• Partially sprouted onions (in soil)
• Carrot tops (in a jar of water placed on the window sill)

This is a learning experience, so if your child decides to try and plant a biscuit, let them. Later on, you can teach them how biscuits are made and why they don’t grow as plants.

3. Keep a garden diary

How do gardens change with the seasons? What can you grow at different times of year? What wildlife might you see? Even the smallest garden can change a lot over time, so encourage your little ones to keep a diary of what they see and find. Since you don’t have to be in the garden for this, it’s one of the best winter gardening activities for children.

How you keep your gardening diary is up to your child (and their imagination), but here are a few kids’ garden ideas to start you off.

• A drawing of their garden at the start of each month
• Drawings or photographs of insects they find
• Leaf rubbings
• Packets from seeds they’ve planted outside
• The results from your food cupboard experiment, including lists and pictures of what grew and what didn’t.

That’s it – three amazing things you can do with your budding gardeners. Just remember: if you’re going to try one of these gardening activities with children, remind them to wash their hands afterwards.