My friend Carol, a long-distance grandparent herself, is growing vegetables in her garden.* (Check out her fabric pots above). I caught that “grow-your-own food” bug, too.  Not in a big way, mind you. It’s more like a “dip your toe in the dirt” version. Still, I’m in awe of how each plant grows.  My grandkids get excited about this, too! While gardening virtually with my grandkids, I hope to help them discover new ways to appreciate the wonders of nature. With a long distance between us, my creativity is being put to the test!

There’s lots of information online about gardening with kids, so I’ve taken a different approach. Instead of trying out random activities, I focused on ideas that would hold a child’s screen interest. Most of the ideas below can work with the simplest of gardens: from pots on a windowsill to a large backyard garden. Your grandchild might also have a home garden. If so, then try some of these together!

GARDENING VIRTUALLY WITH GRANDKIDS

As with all our suggestions at Smiles Beyond Miles, you can adjust for your grandkids’ age and interests.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Learn the name of a plant and you create a connection. For kids, I hope it’s the beginning of appreciating and taking care of the world around them.

Supplies:
A variety of different shaped leaves – start out with 4 or 5
Copy paper
Sharpie marker

How-to:
Before you go to the garden with your grandkids, place 4 or 5 leaves on copy paper.  Write the plant name next to each leaf. Read the names with your grandchild. Then talk about the ways leaves are the same and also different. Afterwards, go on a virtual garden tour. Play a game of trying to match the leaves you selected with ones on the plants.

CHANNELING KIDS’ INNER JACK AND THE BEANSTALK

Plants grow so quickly (if it’s a contest, my weeds win!). Long-distance grandkids can’t follow a plant’s growth in person, but they can still do it with you virtually!

Supplies:
A measuring stick: yardstick, dowel, or any straight stick or pole
Strips of colored paper and clear tape

How-to:
Place your measuring stick in a plant. Then during your video chat, use colored tape or a sticky note strip to mark the current plant height. Then each time you want to check back, use a different color to measure the height. It’s pretty cool to follow the plant’s growth in such a concrete way.  With older kids, you can keep track of the actual measurements, which is a nifty science experiment in the making!

FROM FLOWER TO FRUIT

Unless kids have seen it for themselves, they may not understand that many vegetables and fruits start out as flowers. No supplies needed here. If you can catch the flowers before they fruit, it’s a revelation!  When you can show your grandkids a vegetable just beginning to grow with the flower still attached, that’s even better.

Look closely at the photo. Can you see the cucumber beginning to grow under the flower?

ABOVE AND BELOW

If you’re growing a large variety of veggies, you may have some that grow above and some below the soil. Just showing kids both types reinforces basic concepts they’re learning. It’s also a wonderment to unveil the mystery of what’s growing even though they can’t see it!

TAKING IT FROM HERE

Hopefully I’ve got your creative juices going.  We’ll check back in with you as the summer progresses. In the meantime, have you come up with other ways to involve your grandkids in gardening virtually? We’d love to hear from you!

*I’d like to introduce our dog, Beage. Carol’s garden is one of his favorite places!