jvdubb said:I remember small children visiting a farm I worked on. None of us will ever forget the little cutie who pointed to Queen Anne's Lace growing at the edge of the field and delightedly said "look mom, Queen Anne's Face!"

Love it!

Really good ideas here for little ones.
I plant Tumbler tomatoes either in pedestal containers,
or in an upside down container which can be hung so a child can reach and pick the tomatoes.

Yellow pear tomatoes are great for tiny hands and because they are not very juicy---they do not create juicy messes.

Instead of candy etc. for Easter:
a small child's watering can, small trays with small plastic pots, seeds--cucumber, nasturtium, (small fingers need larger size seeds)
And this year I have found a series of books called Greenhouse Kids---they are short mystery stories for children.

Great ideas coming my way .. Thanks! I'm going to start her off with flowers .. veggies maybe next year.

The kids gloves are cute, but I think one of the most important things is to have her put her bare hands in the warm earth to feel it and smell it, there is nothing like it.

47 years ago, I had a neighbor couple who were in their 70's who allowed me to tag along into their gardens. I was 4 then. All they "did" was talk about why they loved this or that plant, that THIS plant was given to them by their daughter on Mothers day when she was in the 3rd grade, that plant has been in this garden since long before you were born- things such as that. They passed on their love of gardening- never realizing that it would begin a career in horticulture that has served me for the rest of my life.
Funny, I am now doing this with my nearly 4 year old Son and it is a true delight. After 7 non-interested kids before him, I have hit pay-dirt!
What I might recommend is to add the human element into all of it. Plants and people have a lot in common- these are things she will understand. We just "do" our things differently. My Son understands that when it rains, the plants are drinking! When the sun is shining, the plants are eating! When the leaves fall off, they are going to sleep. Go online and find one of those videos that show plant movement speeded up- she will be amazed! They move like us- just slower! Once I was planting seeds and I told him I was putting them in their crib. They would wake up in a week. He remembered that and now he will tell me it is time to put the seeds in their cribs! lol.
Mainly, do not worry to much- your passion will be all she needs.

I agree with Tim. All one needs to do is pass on your passion in a passive way. Don't push it. Both my boys hated nursery trips, but one is now a landscape architect. Ha ha.

At Calgary Seedy Saturday, one vendor had a book and card game for children or anyone.
The book is: Shanlea's Quest by Thomas Elpel. HOPS Press in Montana. (hopspress.com)
The story presents botanical facts in a mythical story.
Then the card game requires remembering the facts.

Great ideas! We'll probably get started next weekend since it's been raining and the ground is way too wet to be digging in! She loves to pick flowers so I'm going through my seed catalog and starting seeds with colorful flowers. The easier to handle ones like the sunflowers I'll save for her to help me plant.

Nasturtiums - big seeds, reliable plants, and so fun to suck the honey out of!

and eat...PB&J with a flower on top (instead of sugar)

Sugar on PBJ? Ewwww.

That was a new one for me also!

Only reason I said the sugar part was because of "pretty please with sugar on top" This way it's "pretty please with nasturtium on top" What can I say...wierd stuff just seems to pop into my head and migrate to my one typing finger.

She will love Giant Zinnias. They are incredible for children and won't be dissapointed by the blooms fading soon.... I also liked Calin's idea of Sunflowers.

Watching things grow from tiny to taller then themselves is awe inspiring to children. These are not only easy, and are right up there for picking your first Beans from a plants you grew and having Grandma cook them!

Dave and Trish have a podcast (#16) called "Gardening with Children" published on May 1, 2013 in which they talk about gardening with their 6, now 7, children and how they do it and why it is so important. I thought it was a great podcast!
http://garden.org/ideas/view/d...

Btw xeramtheum, I see you're in Summerville, SC. That's where my grandparents lived when I was growing up. Fond memories!

To answer the question back up the page a ways, most kids don't get to garden at school because up North you have that nasty cold weather called "Winter". The kids are out of school for summer, which is most of the growing season for most of the country, and Canada. There's not enough time in fall, and maybe 2 months in spring when you could grow anything, right?

Down here in the South we can start a garden in September and harvest in 3 months, time to make Stone Soup and clear out the beds for the holidays. But we have to pick early, short maturity tomatoes and such to make sure we actually have stuff to pick in time for the soup. Then the new semester starts in January, perfect timing to plant cool-season stuff like lettuce, carrots and broccoli. We have to wait until late Feb. (or this year, mid-March! ) to put in beans, tomatoes, peppers and the like.

Still here we are at the end of March and we only have 9 weeks before school is over. We'll be able to harvest potatoes, beans, carrots, peppers, onions and maybe tomatoes (if it will just warm up!) and our cool season salad stuff is nearly over already. The lettuce is getting bitter and starting to bolt. Still, it's all a learning experience, and the kids just LOVE it. We talk about everything from Photosynthesis and chlorophyll to plant life cycles with the big kids to 'what does a leaf do' with kindergartners. Bugs, water, sun, composting, interplanting, worms, what things are good for the garden (good bugs, bees, butterflies, snakes EWWWW) and bad for the garden (chemicals, cold weather, rabbits, chewing caterpillars). Every weed is an opportunity to ask "why do we have to pull out weeds?" or "what IS a weed?", every bug and worm sparks a question. So much fun!

As far as getting hands dirty, I agree, it's wonderful to dig in with your bare hands. But it's a problem for school kids when they are only in the garden for 1/2 an hour, then they have to go back to class. Also a bit of a safety concern, thus the gloves go on whenever the kids come to the garden, and it really helps them to feel free to plant, thin out seedlings, touch bugs and plants and look for worms.

Fun fact, did you know most Florida kids don't know how to put on gloves? Warm weather is such a problem . . .

Speaking from having been a Florida kid from a few generations of Florida kids ( and then a few ) I totally relate to the not knowing how to put gloves on Elaine...

To this day I have to work really hard to for clean fingernails, and thorns or not refuse to wear them. I just love the feel of dirt in my hands and I guess.........

Yep, you're talking to the original 'dirty fingernail girl' here, David. Can't keep my hands out of the dirt, even though I keep gloves all around the garden.

Once I do put on the gloves, though, the signal to the brain is "time to work" and I get a lot more done. It seems to work the same with the kids, they put on the gloves and it's kind of a signal that they're actually meant to dig in and work, not just stand around and talk about it.

We work hard to keep the kids thinking it's their garden, not ours that they're just allowed to visit. We had a new volunteer last week, and I caught her doing a little bit of weeding! She was surprised when I said "don't pull the weeds, they are for the kids!" then had to explain that "we're just here to coach, not to play the game for them" Besides, it's amazing how many little weeds get pulled out when you have 20 little pairs of hands working at it!