When planting a garden with your children, not only will they learn where their food comes from they will also learn to nurture and grow something that will encourage good eating habits as well as patience.
The visual child will be able to envision the end product and give great insight into the color combinations, patterns and details no one else would ever have thought of. She will be excited to draw up detailed plans, and be sure to bring her to the nursery to pick out the plants — the visual stimulation of all the plants in one place will be a joy, and might spark new ideas. Your visual child will be the first ones to weed and straighten any plant growing out of line, and the first to notice any new growth. The visual child’s persistence in seeking perfection means he will eagerly maintain the garden, and truly enjoy the fruits of their labor: the vegetables perfectly presented on the table, or the flowers beautifully arranged in a vase.
The tactile child will love the actual planting process — in the ground digging, fertilizing and watering. Being doers, they will prefer the hard work stages of growing a garden. Expect them to get messy, so wear old clothes and make the rules clear in advance — in their enthusiasm, you could end up with a hole being dug to China, or a garden patch four times larger than expected. They will need to be monitored with the planting, as their focus is to get the job done, not necessarily to have it look pretty. They find it hard to conceptualize the future look of a garden, so plans (or rules) are very important to getting a garden that looks good when finished.
The auditory child is pattern based with his thinking, so he will love the mathematics of planning a garden, and enjoy the drawing of plans and the picking out of flowers and vegetables. Be sure to discuss concepts like growth time, sunlight needs and watering recommendations, as all these are concepts they can understand easily. An older child will take great pride in learning which vegetable plants support the other, in a more holistic type of garden patch. The auditory child will be attentive to timely planting, and spot-on about knowing when vegetables or flowers should be available for picking. They will be good at the general upkeep of the garden, even before the flowers or vegetables are showing signs of life, and they will water and weed in a gradual process, a little each day.
Fairies in the garden! Taste and smell children will respond to the possibilities of what could be, and their imaginations will play a great role. They won’t really respond to the reasoning behind why things should be planted in a particular place or order and will be more interested in the “feel” of the garden. They will like to build little homes for imaginary creatures, so having a gnome looking after the beans, or the possibility of fairies living in the dahlias will spark their interest more than the actual plants. They will take great pride in showing their loved ones their garden, and preparing dinner with the produce, but perhaps they may still be fussy about the taste.
Many activities can be enhanced and adapted to encourage your child’s participation, and by understanding your child’s dominant sense you can enhance the aspects which your child will enjoy most, and know which parts will be a challenge.
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Priscilla Dunstan is a behavioral researcher and creator of the Dunstan Baby Language and author of "Child Sense" and "Calm the Crying." She currently works in New York as a behavioral consultant. Learn more about Dunstan at www.dunstanbabynewyork.com
