Hello everyone! We are so happy to be back here on Steemit! So in today’s post I wanted to talk to all of you that home school and homestead or just plant a garden every year to grow your own food.
I want to start this post which I hope turns into a conversation down in the comments below with a question. Does home schooling and gardening go together?
I would have to say that it does and I would say that it is probably one of the best teaching opportunities that you can have!
Now that the weather is turning nice its time to put up the books you have been teaching out of all winter and get out side!
We try to turn every thing into some kind of learning experience for our children so we also use the simple act of planting a garden into a learning tool. I don’t think that a lot of people realize just how much children can learn from something as simple as a garden.
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We start out with the planning phase. We have our children help us with what we are going to plant and where. This makes children learn how to do research on what plants can go together and what plants to keep away from one another. This helps you have a bountiful harvest. This phase also helps them learn space management skills.
Then we start into the setup phase of the garden. We like to use this time to teach or just review on some math that they have learned over the winter. They have to know how long and how wide the garden must be in order to hold everything they want to plant. This is also a good way to show them how to get the square footage of an area. You can also show them that there are all kinds of different ways to grow a garden. You don’t have to use the old till and sow method of gardening.
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Now its time to finally plant your seeds and yes another teaching opportunity! With this step we like to have our children do word problems. I know what you’re thinking! How on earth do you turn planting seeds into word problems? It’s really easy! Every thing you need for it is right on the package! For example the package tells you that there are 50 seeds in the package. The package also tells you that you need to plant two seeds per hole and each hole needs to be four inches apart. So now the children know that there are 50 seeds they must be planted two in each hole and the holes must be four inches apart. So you could ask them how many holes do we need to plant all the seeds? You could also ask how long will the row be after you planted all the seeds? But if you really want to get tricky on them you could ask them how long would each row be if I wanted five even rows. You can get as crazy as you want with this! It really all depends on the level of your child.
After everything is done and your just waiting on all that wonderful food to grow. We like to use this time to teach yet another lesson not really covered in books. That lesson is responsibility. We like to teach them that it is our responsibility to make sure the plants get enough water, and that we help them grow and be happy by taking out any weeds that might try to take over their home. We also teach them that failure to do this could cause your plants to die or not to grow at all.
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But you don’t have to stop there! You can go into the science of the plants and talk about Photosynthesis, Chlorophyll, and Germination of the plants! There are so many things you can go into when it comes to using your garden as a teaching tool. It’s almost endless!
But we want to hear from you all! Is this something that you do? Have you even thought about doing this? Please comment below and let us know what you think!