Gardening is a fun way to spend time outside (and indoors!), learn about plants and science, relieve stress, and get satisfaction from eating a cucumber or picking a flower from a seed you planted. Try these simple activities in pots in your home or in a small space outdoors:
- For young children, find a narrow, rectangular pot (or an aluminum loaf pan) or spot outside, and fill with soil. Using plastic letter stencils or letter stencils you’ve created out of paper, place the stencil of each letter of your child’s name in the soil. Sprinkle each of the stencils with grass or chive seeds. Water, wait, and watch your child’s name grow!
- Planting scavenger hunt: See how many items you can find in your house that you could turn into a pot for a plant! Think egg cartons, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass jars, etc, or build one using Legos. Then, put in some soil, plant some seeds, add water, and watch them grow!
- No seeds? No worries! You can still garden by planting parts of fruits and veggies you purchased and watching them grow! Collect a few leaves of lettuce, bok choy, or cabbage and place them in a bowl with just a bit of water in the bottom. Place the bowl in a spot that gets good sunlight and mist the leaves with water every other day. After a few days, roots will start to appear along with new leaves. When this happens you can transplant your lettuce or cabbage in soil in a pot.
For more gardening activities, the Denver Botanic Gardens provides lots of fun, printable activities for kids and families: https://www.botanicgardens.org/education/children-family-programs