It’s National Children’s Gardening Week from 25th May to 2nd June, which coincides with half term. This is a great time to swap out screen time for green time. There are so many benefits of gardening with children as Squires Garden Centres highlights in this article.

Here are a few simple gardening ideas to try this National Children’s Gardening Week…

Quirky Planters

You can transform unwanted items such as old wellies, shoes, tins and bottles into quirky plant pots. They look great and are a brilliant way to recycle unwanted items. Suttons gives the rundown on what flowers to sow this month: https://www.suttons.co.uk/flower-seeds/flowers-to-sow/may

Sew some fruit, vegetable and salad seeds

This is one of our Summer Holiday Challenges. Get some seeds that are suitable for sowing in the summer months and are easy to grow such as carrots, salad leaves, cucumbers, peas or pumpkins (which if sown May/June will be ready for Halloween). Let the kids prepare the ground, sow them, label them and care for them. Then look forward to harvest time! I find children are usually more open to eating/trying things they’ve grown themselves.

We’ve also planted some potatoes in the past.

Cress heads

An oldie, but a goodie. Remove the top of the eggs, leaving two-thirds intact. Wash the shells and carefully dry. Then decorate with felt tip pens. The usual is to draw a face to accompany the cress ‘hair’, but great creative! Next dampen some cotton wool balls in water and place one in each shell and then sprinkle some cress seeds on top. Put them in a sunny spot and in about 5-7 days it’ll be ready to harvest. Egg and cress sandwich anyone?

Encouraging wildlife into your garden

Plants provide food and shelter for wildlife. In previous years, we’ve scattered wild flower seeds and have done Beebombs, which attract butterflies, bees and other insects.

Flowering plants such as lavender, foxgloves and roses provide plenty of nectar. Birds love the humble daisy, and sunflowers are a big hit as we discovered for ourselves.

You could also add a Ladybird tower to attract this cheerful spotty bug to your garden as well as the other beneficial insects, which keep pesky aphids and greenfly at bay.

Grow sunflowers from seed

Who doesn’t love this cheery, bold and bright flower? They’re incredibly easy to grow and shoot up quickly. Now is the perfect time to sow seeds outdoors for blooms from June through to September. You can even plant a seed in an individual biodegradable pot containing a soil coin and start off indoors. The pot can then be planted directly into the ground outside when the sunflower is ready. The Big Sunflower Project has some handy hints and tips on the transition from indoor to outdoor.

Make a miniature terrarium – mini garden in a jar

We’ve not done this before, but it looks cute and fun!

• Use a clean glass jar such as a jam jar
• Add a layer of decorative stones and sand
• Top with soil
• Add moss on top that will act as grass
• Plant miniature plants or cuttings into your jar
• Get creative; add a small decorated rock or Lego characters, plastic figurines or animals

Similarly you can create a fairy or dinosaur garden. Simply sow flower seeds that are appropriate for the time of year and add decorative details such as a house, pebbles and mini ‘trees,’ and then add your figurines.

Happy gardening and please post any of your children’s’ gardening ideas or projects in the comments section below.

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i-SPY in the Garden

i-SPY Butterflies and Moths

i-SPY Garden Birds

i-SPY in the Night Sky 

I was a fan of the Michelin i-SPY books when I was little and I’ve bought a number for my children; I even included i-SPY On a car journey in my Car Games for Long Journeys post.

So I was happy when Collins told me about a new range of titles for the series. I picked three to review with my daughters and we’ve been using them loads since they arrived.

If you’re unfamiliar with them, the pocket-sized books all have a different theme, but same premise: you spy something, you tick off what you see as and get a score for it (5 points through to 50 points according to how common/rare your spot is). When you get 1000 points you can apply for a certificate and badge.

The books really encourage children to look around and take notice of their surroundings and environment and provide a great on-going challenge.

i-SPY Wild flowers

Plenty of Gorse!

We’ve been on a number of walks during the Easter holidays and have spotted lots. There was plenty of Gorse when we went on the National Trust trail at Headley Heath; in the wetland area of Morden Hall Park I found out that what I’d always thought were mutant buttercups were in fact marsh-marigolds, at Hampton Court we spotted an array of wild flowers and we also discovered that the banks of motorways were a haven for them, particularly primroses. We even got a ‘top spot’ with Green Alkanet in our own garden!

The book is colour-coded so if you spot a white, yellow, blue, pink… flower you can skip right to the appropriate bit in the book. This makes it nice and easy to use and the pictures are clear so everything is easy to identify. There is also a brief written description to make extra sure you’ve got it right. It’s also all indexed. There’s a fact file about each including info on when it flowers, where it’s found and what its scientific name is.

There are also some wild flower questions included so you can amass bonus points if you answer correctly. This one was my favourite of the three books.

i-SPY Flags

Flag spot jackpot!

My daughters have always been interested in different flags and particularly love spotting the Devon and Cornish ones when we’re travelling in the southwest, so this one was ideal.

The book contains over 140 flags and there is a nice little fact file on each country with details on the capital, languages spoken, currency, population and county’s size. All the countries are indexed too.

We’ve found that flags are fertile ground for spotting. We’ve not only seen them outside restaurants and shops serving food and selling products from different countries, but also on the news, at the funfair, at currency exchange bureaus and even when watching the Bahrain Grand Prix! I’ll keep you posted on our progress in spotting the São Tomé and Príncipe flag…

This is my eight year-old’s favourite of the three.

i-SPY Something beginning with…

Already spotting ‘something beginning with…’ and they’re still in their PJs!

I wanted to get this one to give us some inspiration and hopefully expand the repertoire of our traditional eye-spy game.

Arranged alphabetically, there are a great variety of items to spot for every letter ranging from an easy apple to a very difficult ‘top spot’ of zither.

It was the easiest book to navigate, very straightforward with no fact files or info and it really suited my twin five-year olds; it even helped with their phonics homework.

We found it was worth flicking through first to familiarise ourselves on some of the things we should be looking out for. However, if you spot things that aren’t included there are extra blank spaces at the back for each letter to record your personal spots.

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Priced at just £2.69 or less, I think they represent fantastic value for money. The girls are particularly eager to get their i-SPY certificates and badges, so their interest will be sustained. Easy to use and ideal for taking out-and-about or alleviating boredom, these were perfect for my daughters, who are aged between five and eight. I think they would suit any child from the age of three and I’ve certainly been enjoying spotting things too!

You can find the full list of new titles here. They are available now.

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