As a parent, choosing a hobby you can bond with your children may be the best way to build your relationship with them. One activity you can do with them is gardening. Children may need to experience the joys of nature and the outdoors as soon as possible, as there are many benefits they can get from this activity.
The growth and development of a child can be affected by their environment. There are several ways to ensure that a child will grow healthy physically and intellectually. So here are some ways getting involved in gardening can help a child in their early life stages.
Gardening’s benefits for children’s physical and mental wellbeing
Gardening helps maintain children’s health and wellness as they grow up. This is because this activity allows children to get proper daily exercise. A hobby like gardening needs physical effort. Not much, but enough to energize the body and keep it fit and healthy. Also, if you plan on keeping crops, it may encourage the kids to eat more nutritious meals.
Gardening exercise for children
- Breathing exercises in the garden
- Walking and smiling around flowers
- Lying on the lawn grass
- Running through the fields
- Searching and observing small animals
If you finally complete your garden, there are several exercises your children can do that may help them relieve some stress from the comfort of their homes:
Gardening can also help in keeping the mind at ease. It helps remove stress and gives children more focus. Additionally, it is very satisfying, and children may enjoy the fruits of labor without worries. Finally, it helps children with their cognitive growth, frees them from stressful thinking, and gives them peace of mind.
Social activity
Gardening is usually a group hobby. In addition to family members, children may invite friends and relatives to bond over creating a garden. Working together can be fun and it builds a community among friends and loved ones. Also, it may be an opportunity for your children to make new friends with similar interests in gardening.
Garden games
Your children can play games in the garden after work or for leisure. Here is a list of games they could bond over after a day’s work:
- Hide and seek
- Hopscotch
- A game of tag
- Kick the can
- Tug of war
Learning to respect the environment
The most important thing the children may learn from gardening is respecting the environment. The main point of getting your children involved is to teach them about the beauty and wonders of the natural world. It gives them first-hand experience with how nature works and gives them an awareness of how to protect and maintain it.
Gardening may be your children’s first hands-on experience with nature, but a few more activities may help them understand how important it is to protect the environment:
- Teach your children how to compost garbage properly for the garden.
- Teach them how to save water by watering their plants evenly.
- Have them breathe fresh air in the garden they help build.
- Let them observe the different plants and animals in your garden, so they may know how each creature depends on one another.
- Teach them how to recycle and reuse materials you usually throw away.
Gardening crops that you can use
Here is a list of healthy crops your children may use in their gardening hobby. You can help them take care of their garden crops as a bonding moment for their friends and family:
- Beans and sprouts
- Corn
- Squash
- Cabbage
- Potatoes
- Lettuce
- Carrots
Gardening is fun!
As a whole, gardening is a hobby that may help children in many ways while growing up. It may be the most accessible and productive activity to support their physical, mental, and social development in the earliest stages of their lives. As parents, you may owe this experience to your children as their most memorable first encounter with mother nature herself.
So try it; it’s never too late for your children to enjoy and experience the joys of gardening!
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