INSPIRATION CORNER
Muddy boots and green fingers
The Alliance’s Melanie Pilcher explains how to bring [horti]cultural capital to the early years
Melanie is responsible for resources that support best practice in all matters relating to the EYFS.
As the first green shoots push their way through bare soil and trees begin to unfurl their fresh green cloaks, there is an opportunity too good to be missed. Educators can nurture children’s natural curiosity by encouraging them to notice the signs of Spring and incorporating them into their educational programmes.
National Gardening Day on 14 April is dedicated to drawing attention to the hobby of gardening and encouraging gardeners to share their knowledge to inspire others. Although it’s not the only ‘named’ day dedicated to gardening, it’s the earliest one on the calendar so marks an ideal time to tap into children’s fascination and get started!
In fact, April is named as National Lawn and Gardening month, giving you plenty of scope to grow and expand your educational programmes as you build on children’s [horti]cultural capital. By the end of April, you may find that everyone in your setting is developing green fingers, which leads you nicely into National Children’s Gardening Week 24 May to 1 June – when you should be seeing the results of children’s care and attention to whatever you planted back in March.
Growing for the future
Nowadays, the need to produce food for the family table is met on an industrial scale. Fruit and vegetables are no longer seasonal, they’re sourced from all over the world, but what we may have gained in convenience is offset by the environmental impact of transporting fruit and vegetables into supermarkets.
The art of growing food is being lost, along with the innate skills that gardening requires such as being able to read the weather, prepare the soil and judge the right time to harvest a crop. Growing your own fruit and veg is eco-friendly, sustainable and far more rewarding than plastic wrapped produce that may have been in cold storage for 6-12 months before travelling thousands of miles to be put on a supermarket shelf.
Growing for learning
You could start your gardening initiative with the children this year by celebrating National Gardening Day. Children delight in helping with a project, especially when they can see the results of their efforts in a relatively short space of time. Gardening is a great way to instil responsibility, patience and nurturing, as well as other important life skills that contribute towards self-regulation. It’s good for grown-ups, too, so if a child’s enthusiasm extends to the home learning environment, then so much the better!
All areas of learning and development benefit from activities linked to gardening and growing produce, encouraging an awareness of where our food comes from.
Getting started
Growing fruit and veg is not about having the space. You can plant a fruit tree in a pot outside and even grow vegetables on a window box or in a grow bag! Identifying a piece of ground to cultivate is a bonus, not a necessity. Involve the children from the outset. What will your plants need to be able to grow? Sunlight, some shade on the hottest days, water and lovely rich soil (or compost). Now is the time to be hands on – encourage children to dig and explore the soil. How does it feel and smell? What can they find among the dirt? They’ll probably find a few minibeasts, leading to other teachable moments as you talk about worms and other creepy crawlies that live below the surface.
What to plant
- Plant pumpkin seeds and watch children’s utter amazement later in the year as a pumpkin emerges from the flower, and grows and grows… See who can grow the biggest by nurturing it with ‘food’ and water.
- Sunflowers are a great plant for children. They grow quite quickly, reach incredible heights and, as the flower heads die back, provide sunflower seeds that can be dry roasted for snack time or added to a bird feeder.
- Broad beans or runner beans are another quick crop; children will be fascinated at how they climb a pole and cling on.
- Herbs offer a multi-sensory experience and need little more than a pot, sunshine and water to thrive! Add chopped parsley or mint to snacks, or gently crush a leaf between the fingers to release the heady smell of lemon balm.
A little bit of health and safety first
Make sure you check soil for visible signs of animal faeces or litter before children are let loose with trowels or forks. While mud itself isn’t harmful and contains many good bacteria that help to build children’s resilience, animal faeces can cause toxoplasmosis which in extreme cases can cause blindness. Vigilance and good hand hygiene is essential before and after each gardening session.
Remember that some plants can be harmful to children and babies. You can find a list of potentially harmful plants on the RHS website: bit.ly/RHS-harmfulplants.
Growing for health and wellbeing
Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) has strong links to activities associated with gardening. Being outdoors and making connections with nature is good for little ones’ mental health and wellbeing.
Mindfulness
Planting and caring for plants is a ‘mindful’ activity increasing dopamine levels that affect emotions, behaviour and movement. Children who struggle to self-regulate will benefit from time spent gardening as an activity that instils patience and a sense of responsibility. Before commencing with any gardening tasks, take time to observe the area being worked on, listen to the sounds of nature, and encourage children to breathe deeply as they place their hands on the ground to connect with the earth. Children learn with all their senses, so concentrating on what they can see, hear, and smell helps to stimulate the learning potential of the activity.
Physicality
Physical development is promoted as children use large and small muscle groups to dig, rake, and carry equipment. Using tools helps to raise the heartrate and contributes towards the recommended three hours of physical activity a day. Do give children the right tools for the job; small plastic representations will soon break, leading to frustration and potential disengagement with the activity when, despite children’s best efforts, the tools aren’t fit for purpose. Proper tools manufactured for little hands are a good long-term investment.
Fine motor skills are also encouraged as little fingers plant tiny seeds or thin out seedlings so that they have room to grow.
Children will learn how to regulate the amount of force needed to pull a weed or gently remove a dead leaf and how to handle delicate plants that need to be transferred from pots to plots.
Need more inspiration? Have a look at these sites and we can guarantee that gardening will soon grow on you:
Under 5 magazine
The magazine of the Early Years Alliance