5 Gardening Ideas For Kids

Its Easter! Which means two things for parents: You’ve got to entertain the kids for TWO WEEKS but its also when the sun is out and its time to get the garden back into order after winter. I’ve found it to be a great idea to combine the two. These are 5 ways I have kept Rory busy in the garden during the Easter holidays

Bug Hotel

Rory LOVES bugs. We can’t go anywhere without him looking under rocks or down drains to see if he can spot a worm or a woodlouse minding its own business. Normally followed by a shrill shout of “BUG!!!!!”. So I set my dad a challenge (my dad and Rorys bond over gardening is insane). The challenge is to create a Bug Hotel. A box of some kind that Rory can come look in and see all sorts of bugs. A couple of days later he text me a picture of the hotel. He took an old bread bin and put it in an earthy part of the garden. Filled it with sticks, rocks and soil. Lots of damp and dark places for bugs to live. We didn’t have much luck over winter, but now the weather is heating up I think we will see a lot less vacancies at the hotel!

Decorate Plant Pots

The local museum was having activities over the weekend where you could drop in and decorate some plant pots, they then filled them wil soil and popped a Broad Bean seed in there. Great activity for the kids and easily replicated at home.

Planting and Watering

Rory loves to play in the dirt and help with the garden. So I bought him some small tools from Tiger which he loved using to help his granddad plant some seeds over the weekend. We also bought a Watering can attachment for a water bottle which he loves using, also from Tiger.

Bug Viewer

Speaking of Tiger - I bought this Bug Viewer there a few weeks back. Rory loved looking under pots and bricks to find bugs. We picked them up and collected them in the Viewer. Then emptied the bugs into the Bug Hotel so they had a nice damp and dark place to live.

Juice Carton Bird Feeder

We haven’t made this yet, but it looks fun! We are going to place it near the living room window so Rory can see the birds coming to feed. You can find the full instructions here