What better way to emphasize the importance of eating well and living a healthy lifestyle than to introduce your preschooler to gardening? Planting a garden can offer little ones a way to be hands-on with their nutrition and learning early in life.

Gardening is an excellent way to teach children about where their food comes from and is a useful tool to encourage nutritious meals. It can also help with their development and sharpen vital skills that will benefit them throughout life. Helping plants grow teaches children to be responsible and how to care for another living thing. It can grow their sense of accomplishment and encourage a love and respect for nature. Gardening can show children the importance of taking care of the environment and being mindful of and kind to the beautiful world around them.

In addition to teaching littles about where our food comes from and being good stewards of the planet, gardening increases their fine motor skills and physical activity while introducing them to scientific concepts such as the life cycle of plants. Gardening integrates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning by introducing them to the world of science- especially botany, biology, and ecology. It also engages their senses by allowing them to see, smell, touch, taste, and feel the fruits of their labor.

We’re proud to highlight some of our sites who are “digging” into a healthy and nutritious future, and turning their preschoolers into responsible young gardeners!

Growing Legacy Early Learning Center

The young gardeners at Growing Legacy Early Learning Center are being taught how to grow nutritious and delicious veggies and herbs such as collards, kale, lettuce, rosemary, tomatoes, cucumbers, cilantro, and cabbage.

In honor of their beautiful garden, they will be having a Garden Day event on Friday, April 19th from 10:00 - 11:00 am, where they will do a Planting with the Parents activity for the preschoolers. At the event, they will also provide fresh seasonal fruits and veggies to the families at their center!

Kiddie Kollege

Kiddie Kollege is promoting a healthy lifestyle to their families, neighbors, and visitors by providing delicious veggies and herbs such as tomatoes, peppers, basil, carrots, rainbow carrots, squash, melon cucumbers, cabbage, spinach, kale, beans, rosemary, mint, and edible flowers.

They are planning to have a Gardening Day event very soon and teach the children different gardening skills and techniques such as planting, weeding, and spreading mulch.

Creative Schools at Davis Park

Creative Schools at Davis Park is starting a garden this Spring. How exciting! As an opportunity for family engagement, families can donate plants toward the garden. They are planning to have tasty fruits, veggies, and herbs such as strawberries, blackberries, cucumbers, squash, peppers, lettuce, thyme, rosemary, and mint leaves. Beautiful flowers will be added to the garden too.

Since they are in the early stages of starting their garden, there are no events on the calendar yet. However, be on the lookout for a family picnic once the fresh produce is here!