Along with summer comes summer camp here at Sacramento Food
Bank & Family Services. Once a week I get kids from the first through sixth
grade for an hour of garden activities. It takes some time to figure out
what I should do with this diverse crowd in the garden. The older kids
like games while the younger kids like touching, tasting and generally making a
fun mess. I’m wary of letting the younger ones pick veggies since they
tend to stray off paths and pull half a plant up. I have to be conscious
with the older ones because they’ve started forming clusters and don’t willingly
leave their friend group. So the goal of a kids’ gardening class: let
kids explore healthy eating, gardening and science while keeping plants whole
and monitoring the emotions and actions of potentially warring factions.
Sure, super easy. After a couple years, I’ve established a criteria for what
happily occupies kids in the garden. The criterion follows:
For lower grades:
- Dirty is better. Paint, mud, markers are great. Spilling everything onto unprotected surfaces? Even better.
- Have edible things on hand. Younger kids generally have one question for me “WHAT CAN I EAT?”
- Competitive games are the best. Does it involve running, accidentally smacking into each other and the glory of winning? They are all about it.
- Feeding the fish. These kids like responsibility and being a part of the process. Give them some fish food and away they go (applicable to other things involving responsibility).
All kids: Eating strawberries! When all else fails, direct
them to the strawberry patch. Jokes aside, it’s a joy having youth in the garden and
showing them plants or foods they have never seen or eaten. Kids get so
excited in a way that you rarely see in adults and they remind me how the
garden and all the living things inside of it are magical and exciting!
Submitted by: Kate Wilkins, Garden Coordinator
Submitted by: Kate Wilkins, Garden Coordinator
