5 Garden Projects To Pass The Time With Your Kids (No Green Thumb Required!)

Getting lessons through online platforms nowadays can be quite a snore fest for kids, especially if it involves theoretical studies. Since school holiday has arrived, it’s good to bring about changes to their routines to help them stay motivated and get back on track. So, mummies and daddies, how about bringing them out to your garden and do some interesting planting activities together? Getting back to nature just to hit the reset button may be the answer you've been looking for! 5 Easy & Fun Garden Projects For Kids Do bear in mind that in gardening, certain activities and tools are not suitable for kids to handle. So, with that in mind, you should choose those that are safe and kid-friendly. 1. Planting a flowering tree Photo Credit: istockphoto Kids are easily captivated by shapes and colours. To plant a flowering tree, let’s choose petunias as they produce lovely and bountiful flowers. In order to pique your kids’ interests, you can kick start this garden project by letting them choose the colours of petunias they want to grow. Once that's done, start growing the seed together with your little ones by following these steps from keluarga.my: Fill a cup with some coco peat. Put in the seed and place it away from the sunlight. Preferably, do it in your house, where your kids can easily observe the growth of the plant. For the next few weeks, teach them to spray the plant with water once in two days. After a week of two, you'll start to see a seedling happening. As soon as you see the plant's leaves are grown, move it into a small hanging pot and let it grow in the garden. When it grows into a full-grown flowering tree, teach your kids how to prune, trim, and fertilise it. With the right care and love, you can have a lovely hanging petunia tree in your garden. Trust us, mummies and daddies, your kids will surely enjoy the whole process! 2. Growing a seed without soil Photo Credit: istockphoto Instead of growing a seed using soil, let’s show the kids how to grow plants WITHOUT it. Yes, you read that right! For this green project, you'll need a handful of mung bean seeds. They're easy to manage as they can fully grow within days. Let’s try this method shared by Nur Syuhada Mad Isa's YouTube video: Wash and rinse the mung beans thoroughly. Then, soak them in water for five to six hours. Drain and place them in an ice box. For every four to five hours, water and rinse them out. After three days, your bean sprouts are now fully grown! Even on the same day (with constant watering), your kids can already observe the growth and changes of the mung beans. And after a few days, they're ready to be eaten! It must be satisfying for them to taste the fruit of their labours, isn’t it? 3. Growing a tree from stem Photo Credit: istockphoto For this planting project, kids will learn how to grow a plant not from its seed, but rather from the stem of a tree called cassava. Different to petunias and bean sprouts, cassavas, well-known as ubi kayu, grow underneath the soil for quite some time. Thanks to our famous tropical weather, growing a cassava is easy peasy! It propagates by stem cuttings, so you have to get some stems from a cassava tree for this little project: Remove all the leaves of the stem. Cut the leaf buds along with the stem. Make sure their inner parts are exposed. Dig the soil with a shovel and plant the stem vertically. After a few months, roots will grow from the cuttings. A fully grown cassava will take around six to twelve months; depending on the weather and soil's moisture level. This method, written by Donny Len, is a famous technique applied by Thailand’s farmers. Growing cassavas will definitely be an amazing experience for your kids! Oh! You can also teach them how to pluck cassavas' roots for cooking. They're healthy and tasty! 4. Growing a plant from rhizome Photo Credit: istockphoto Do your kids get curious when they see a turmeric rhizome in the kitchen, and ask if it might grow into a tree? We bet they do. Well, in this green thumb project, let’s turn their imaginations into reality! Take a turmeric rhizome from the kitchen. Let the kids fill a small, well-drained pot with high-quality soil; preferably an organic mix. Then, bury the rhizome partially in the soil. Water it from time to time by making sure the soil isn’t too dry or too moist. After 8 months, the turmeric will fully grow beneath the soil. Harvest it by pulling its leaves upwards and shaking soil off it. Well now, we can imagine how excited your kids will be to witness this! 5. Growing a plant from its leaf Photo Credit: istockphoto So, your kids have now successfully tried growing plants from their seeds, stems, and rhizomes. In this yet another plant project, let’s try to shake things up a bit and have fun with another method: Grow plants from their leaves. Let’s choose a popular one, kalanchoe pinnata plant, which is famously known as pokok setawar in Malay. Pick one leaf of kalanchoe pinnata, which has leaf buds along its margin. Fill in a small pot with soil. Place the leaf on top of the soil. Put the pot under the shade and away from direct sunlight. Water it from time to time to make sure its soil is moist. After some time, the roots will grow from the leaf buds and eventually, it'll turn into a sapling and a full-grown plant. This plant propagates quite fast. It would be exciting for the kids to see the changes within a short period of time! Photo Credit: istockphoto See, there are so many great easy planting projects that you can do with your kids during school break. These at-home activities are not only exciting, but also engaging and educational as well! So, what are you waiting for, mummies and daddies? Let’s make our time with the kids during the school holidays more productive and enjoyable, shall we? For more fun-filled holiday ideas right within your home, visit our Cuti-Cuti Family articles here!

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