Gardening Adventures with Your Children by The Goddard School

Gardening Adventures with Your Children

If you want your child to grow up to be a gardener, it’s important to remember to share gardening experiences with them throughout their childhood. These include frequent, pleasurable occurrences, designs that include messy, colorful plots and great memories of working together in the garden. Each child’s capabilities and attention span will vary so it’s important to adjust your expectations. The goal is to teach your children to respect and enjoy gardening as well as experience a feeling of “I did it myself” at harvest time.

The Composting Council of Canada developed the following good reasons to foster a lifelong love of gardening in children.

• Health: Growing your own vegetables makes it easier to get enough servings each day.
• Exercise: Digging, turning, spreading compost, mulching, hoeing, excavating rocks - all burn calories, help build muscles and strengthen hearts and lungs.
• Save Money: Even a small vegetable patch can reduce your expenses.
• Education: Gardening is terrific for providing hands-on lessons in botany, zoology, weather, hydrology, as well as cycles of life, death and physical decay.
• Waste Reduction and Recycling: Compost piles transform kitchen scraps, leaves and yard waste into rich soil amendments. Gardeners can reuse of all kinds of cans, cartoons, meat trays and more.
• Stress Relief: Planting seeds and tending plants can restore balance and perspective.
• Togetherness: Use vegetables grown together to make delicious meals together and donate abundance to people who need it.
• Helps Improve Reading and Math Skills: Children can make plant markers, read seed packets and even help pay for nursery plants.
• Memory Building: Provides great memories for the years to come.
• Satisfaction: The more time you spend with your children in the garden, the more they will feel the garden is truly theirs and the more eager they will be to take care of it.

The Goddard School located in Snellville, GA offers a year-round program for children from six weeks to six-years-old. Children are encouraged to develop at their own pace in a warm environment supported by a team of dedicated teachers. The Goddard School FLEX Learning Program™ is based on a unique learning continuum that encompasses developmental guidelines, formative assessments and child-focused lesson plans that are delivered in a creative and fun environment with a child-centered approach to meet each child's individual needs.

Kyle D. Pruett, M.D., is an adviser for The Goddard School®. Dr. Pruett is an authority on child development who has been practicing child and family psychiatry for over twenty-five years. He is a clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale University's Child Study Center.The Goddard School has become the first preschool program to join P21—a national organization championing 21st century skills. Through the fusion of reading, writing & arithmetic with the 4Cs—critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity—Goddard School graduates are well equipped and ready to succeed in school and in life.Visiting our School is a great way to see our programs in action, introduce you to our teachers and answer your questions.

For more information on why The Goddard School located in Snellville, GA is the place for fun and learning, please contact The Goddard School Snellville!

The Goddard School Snellville
1565 Janmar Rd. Snellville, GA 30078
(678) 344- 0042