13 Easy Ways to Get Your Kids Out in the Garden

Gardening has so many wonderful benefits; it’s natural to want to share it with children in your life. Whether you’re a parent that gardens or a plant aunt/uncle, there are many wonderful ways to get the kids in your life involved in your favorite pastime. 

It’s easy to let children set up camp in front of the many screens that are readily available in most homes. I’m not suggesting that those tablets don’t have their uses, but they’re no replacement for fresh air and sunshine. There is much to learn and create outdoors in our own favorite spaces. 

Whether your objective is to teach them about biology, have them help build a thriving ecosystem, or exercise their creativity, the garden is a fabulous place for children to collaborate. Here are some of my favorite kid-centered activities that get them out among the flowers and learning about nature. 

Cut Flowers for a Neighbor

A small, cut flower garden is a great way to involve kids in gardening. It’s also a wonderful way to teach about generosity and thoughtfulness. Bringing flowers to a neighbor, or a friend’s mom when they go over to play is good for the heart of the giver and the receiver. 

Involve them from the start by planting seeds together. Zinnias and sunflowers are so easy to grow, and they bloom quickly. Think of flowers you can directly plant in your bed or start seeds together in cells and set them in a window to watch them sprout. 

Depending on the child’s age, weeding may be a difficult task. As long as they know how to use a pair of scissors, they can harvest a bouquet. Even smaller children can select the flowers to cut. Teach them to save and clean empty glass jars from the kitchen to use as vases. 

Gather Ingredients From the Kitchen Garden

Do you have a budding chef in your family? My middle child often asks what she can help with in the kitchen. She loves to go out and gather fresh herbs or pluck a ripe bell pepper to chop for a salad. 

A child who loves cooking will likely enjoy helping in the kitchen garden. It’s a great way to teach kids about fertilizer and companion planting. A child can learn what makes vegetables and herbs grow large and robust in a small kitchen garden.

It’s fun to experiment here, as well. Grow some basil next to one of your tomato plants to see if it influences the flavor (It can!). Teach them about the different stages when we should harvest certain vegetables. 

Kids love to feel helpful and hear that they are doing a good job. Make sure to let dinner guests know who your helper is. The positive feedback will keep your child wanting to learn and grow more delicious ingredients. 

Off With Their Heads!

The flowers, of course! Take a whimsical approach to deadheading with a child who can handle a small pair of snips. Whether they are familiar with the Queen of Hearts or not, kids will love the task of deadheading in the garden.

It’s easy to add a science lesson to this task. Discuss pollination and how flowers create seeds. Talk about plants self-seeding in your flower beds and how the plant will bloom longer if we stop it from going to seed. Teach them that everything has a time in the garden. By deadheading the spent blooms, we enable the plant to put energy into forming and supporting new growth. 

Even a small child can pop the spent flowers off of your marigolds. Deadheading is fun because it’s the opposite of what we teach them when we tell them not to pick flowers. It satisfies the need to be just a little rebellious, but it’s actually a huge help!  

Have a Scavenger Hunt

Create a fun scavenger hunt for children by making a list of things for them to find in the garden. A heart-shaped leaf, a pine cone, yellow flower petals, or an interesting insect make great scavenger hunt items. Anything that you know is out there is fair game. 

Print out or handwrite your list and clip it to a clipboard with a pencil for them to check the boxes. You can also give them a box to collect the items that they find, as long as you don’t mind them picking things. 

Create Garden Art

Did your scavenger hunt result in a bunch of interesting items to talk about? Your child can use their items to make artwork. There are so many directions you can take with this activity— the possibilities go on and on!

A collage of the items they find interesting and beautiful is a lovely keepsake. You can use crayons and make leaf prints by sandwiching different leaves between sheets of paper. Rub the side of the crayon across the paper and see the leaf appear in different colors. 

Try painting or stamping with different items. A spent flower stem can be a paintbrush. Dip items in paint and stamp them across a sheet of paper to see what imprint they leave. 

Create a Fairy Garden

My kids love to play in their fairy garden. There are so many ideas to play with when you help them to build one. Plan ahead and look for interesting items that you can repurpose as fairy-sized. Make a tiny door and attach it to the trunk of a tree near the ground. You’ll make that tree a bit of magic for a lifetime. 

You can make a fairy garden directly in a section of the yard or create a designated container. A small raised bed is perfect for this activity. It brings things up to eye level, where kids are more likely to return and play with their creations. 

Go Butterfly Spotting

Butterflies are the real fairies of the garden. Take or send children to the pollinator garden to see how many types of butterflies they can find. They can take photos or draw pictures of the species they find and make note of which plants they seem fond of. 

Later, look up the different butterflies they find and see their native range and what their host plants are. This is a great way to teach kids about host plants, and how each butterfly has a specific plant that feeds their babies. 

Bonus Points for Chrysalis Finding!

Chrysalises and caterpillars can be more elusive than their parents. If you want to extend the activity, have kids search the areas where they see butterflies. See if they can find larvae in a chrysalis at any stage. Then, look up their findings to see what type of butterflies will be in the garden in a short time.

Make a Pollinator Watering Station

Pollinators like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds all need to stay hydrated. These creatures work hard to collect nectar and pollen from your flowers. They also play a very important role in pollinating, so your plants produce more blooms, fruits, and vegetables. 

A birdbath makes an excellent pollinator watering station. Fill it with pebbles or colored glass stones if you want to get fancy. These give bees and other small beneficial insects a place to rest, so they don’t drown. Fill with water so that just the tops of the stones are dry.

There are many ways to create a watering station in your yard. It’s so exciting to go outside and see bees gathering around to have a refreshing drink. Kids can spot different species and find out what type of native bees live in your area. 

Bees locate water by scent rather than by sight. If your tap water contains enough chlorine, this will attract them. If not, toss a couple of oyster shells in there, or some other organic matter.

Collect Seeds for Next Year

In the fall, seed collecting is a great activity for kids to participate in. You can tie this in with deadheading to show them the final result of leaving some spent flowers alone so that you have seeds for next year. 

Buy a box of plain envelopes and let kids draw or paint them with a picture of the flower that the seeds came from. Allow them to make their own seed packets and learn how to store them for the winter. This activity can carry right over into spring when they can help to prepare and plant the seeds they collected last season. 

Make the Birds Feel Welcome

When it comes to birds, they can be wonderful helpers in the garden. They eat tons of insects, so they help with natural, pollinator-safe pest control. Some birds are pollinators, too! Some birds eat seeds and help to redistribute them, so you’ll have flowers popping up in fun and surprising places. 

Have kids think of ways to make the garden more attractive to our winged friends. Build or paint a birdhouse and let them decide where to hang it. Give them access to a bag of bird feed so they can be in charge of making sure the feeders stay full. 

Help them create bird baths, so local birds have a place to drink and preen themselves. A cement bird bath is a great canvas for making a mosaic. There are many household items or things you can find secondhand to construct a makeshift bird bath. 

Help kids to spot and identify the birds in your yard. Look them up, and make note of their native range. You can do this at different times of the year and tie in a lesson on migration.

Paint Flower Pots

Painting flower pots is a simple project that even younger kids can enjoy. Pick up some basic terracotta pots from the store or nursery and let kids choose different colors of acrylic paint. They will enjoy the painting, and you will have a heartwarming keepsake to enjoy for years. 

Draw this project out by letting the child decide what to plant in the pot they’ve painted. Talk about the light and watering needs of their plant and help them find the right location for it. Let them take care of their special plant in their special pot.

Make Stepping Stones

Some of the most prized items in my yard are stepping stones that my children have made over the years. Craft stores sell kits to make this process simple, or you can gather the materials yourself and make this a repeat project. My mom had a stepping-stone station on the back porch for years. The resulting stones remain to this day, and she treasures each one. 

If you want to collect special items rather than going the kit route, here are some things that work well. You can repurpose broken china by sanding the edges smooth and piecing them together. Small glass marbles and tiles work well. If you have a collection of seashells from a recent vacation, this is a great way to hold onto them.

Create Sunprints

Cyanotype printing is an exciting and educational project that brings kids into the garden. This photographic printing process is fascinating for kids accustomed to the instant gratification of digital photography. Teach kids about the different chemicals and how exposure to the sun imprints the image on the paper. 

This is a project that my kids truly enjoy. I like to purchase canvas tote bags and paint them with cyanotype paint. Collect leaves, flowers, sticks, and other items from the yard and make mandalas or patterns. These make wonderful, reusable gift bags with a personal touch. 

Kids can participate in all steps of this process and will be tickled to watch their patterns develop. It’s a great teaching activity that helps them to look for different shapes and opacities in nature and use them to create beautiful artwork.