Plant a seed

Most kids take naturally to gardening. They love getting their hands dirty, hunting for bugs and worms, and they especially love doing it side by side with you.

There’s something extra special about starting plants from seeds. Watching a plant sprout, grow, and eventually bear fruit all from a speck of a seed is a brilliant metaphor for life at best and teaches patience at least. No instant gratification here. It’s a journey, full of discovery, hard work, eventual success and sometimes failure.

Children take incredible pride in and care of plants they’ve nurtured from seed. And they’ll eat almost any fruit it bears, even when it’s a vegetable (unscientific estimates put the likelihood of a child eating something he grew at 500 times him eating that same vegetable from the supermarket)!

Even if you don’t think you have a green thumb, or weren’t blessed with parents or grandparents who shared their gardening wisdom, planting seeds is something you can do with your child. Some of the easiest and most rewarding plants to start are sunflowers, tomatoes, carrots, and peas.

Start small. You don’t need a big backyard, or even a backyard at all.  Container gardening can be extremely fruitful in small spaces. Community Gardens can be found in most suburban and  metropolitan areas. If your school has a garden, volunteer! If it doesn’t, start one.

Get growing! Pledge to plant seeds with a child today. The fruits of your labor will stay with them for a lifetime.