nature kid

When Gardens Teach Your Kids About Failure

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Text: When Gardens Teach Your Kids About Failure; Photo: White woman frowning standing next to a straggly garden
Our garden this year is a testament to my kids that even when you work really hard, you don’t always get what you want.
My cherry tomatoes are usually the pride and joy of my garden. They’re a ridiculous, messy, borderline “haunted garden” disaster area that gives the weeds a run for their money; they also produce a zillion amazing tomatoes. My late, beloved neighbor once told me that she had a bet with our other neighbor that I wouldn’t be able to grow tomatoes – and then was proud of me when she lost her bet. I’m that person who brings in cherry tomatoes to work because we can’t possibly eat all of them. My older son is constantly raiding the garden.
But not this year. And not just because I’m working from home. But because we have stumps sitting in our garden that have produced exactly zero tomatoes so far. At this point, we’ll be extremely lucky if we get any tomatoes at all this year.

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How to Save and Use Seeds from the Garden With Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

How to Save and Use Seeds from the Garden With Kids (Photo: Bowls of sunflower seeds on a counter)

Two huge sunflowers rose out of my children’s garden, their once yellow faces bending down towards the Earth. Holding a serrated knife, I wondered how on Earth I was going to get their seeds out. But I had promised my kids sunflower seeds and sunflower seeds were what I was going to deliver.

Despite my conundrum, saving and using seeds from your garden (or even farmer’s market purchased produce), isn’t that complicated. It’s a great activity to do with kids that you can use to illustrate the life cycle of plants and teach them how to use as much of the plant as possible. It also minimizes reliance on store bought seeds for your garden. After you’ve harvested the seeds, you can save them for next year’s garden, feed them to wildlife, or even cook them off and eat them yourself.

If you’re interested in saving seeds, here are the main steps:

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The Life Lessons I Want My Kids to Gain from Gardening

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

The Life Lessons I Want My Kids to Gain from Gardening (Photo: Two young white children standing in front of giant sunflowers)

“Don’t walk – just stay there,” I told my two-year-old as he maneuvered around the wheelbarrow in our garden. Squish! His foot came right down on a squash vine. Oh well – there’s plenty more where that came from.

Even though my kids aren’t always gentle when it comes to my plants, they bring joy to my gardening. I think it benefits them too. Besides the health benefits, there’s a bunch of valuable life lessons I hope they pick up from our adventures in growing food.

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How to Find Nature in the City and Suburbs

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

It may seem difficult to find nature in the city. But with these eight ideas, you’ll be able to find nature anywhere you go!

How to Find Nature in the City and Suburbs (Photo: Dandelion growing out of a sidewalk)

Flipping over a rock, I ask my kids, “Do you think anyone’s here?”

Spotting a rather large spider scrambling towards my pants leg, I almost drop the rock on my foot. “Ah ah!” I yell and shake my leg. My two and four year old turn to look at me, wondering what on earth just happened. “I just… there was a big spider. Did you see it?”

Despite the spider, we weren’t in a nature preserve or large forest. Instead, we were in a grassy area right behind our house, with a road on one side and a graveyard on the other. Despite living in a semi-urban area, we regularly find ways to encounter nature. I truly believe that you can encounter nature almost anywhere, even in the most urban of locations.

Here are some of our favorite ways to find nature in the city and suburbs:

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How to Garden Round the Seasons

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Garden Round the Seasons (Photo: Small child playing in the dirt surrounded by tomato plants)

My beans have wilted, either from the slugs slurping on them or the sun beating down on them. Random holes in my garden are a testament to the birds digging for worms. The squash leaves are full of nibbles. Every year around late spring, I begin to despair about my garden.

Yet every late summer and fall, we have produce fresh from the backyard. (Sometimes bountiful, sometimes less so.) At the end of every year, I find growing my garden worthwhile. It brings our food miles down to zero, ensures my food is totally organic, stores carbon in the soil, creates habitat for animals, and is a wonderful way to bond with my kids.

But how do we go from those spring days to the (semi)-successful harvests? The whole process starts in the winter.

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How to Teach Your Kids to Love Biking and Walking

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Want to get your kids outside, have more exercise, and lower your carbon footprint? Try biking and walking places with your kids with these five ways to help them love non-car transportation. 

How to Teach Your Kids to Love Biking and Walking (Photo: One little kid pushing another in a little pretend car)

“You said we were walking! Noooooooooooo!” my four-year-old yelled as we tried to get in the car. Oops. I may have mentioned that we would be walking to the library instead of driving.

While it can be inconvenient on days when we’re running late, I do love that my son loves walking and biking places. Active transportation gets kids outside, keeps them moving, builds relationships with neighbors, minimizes greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, and increases kids’ independence.

While our society advertises a minivan as the ultimate family vehicle, it’s actually possible to shift trips away from driving. One of my friends with four kids under seven years old actually doesn’t own a car at all! (I am still in awe of her.)

If you’re interested in making the shift, here are some tips to get you started:

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How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Thinking about starting seeds for your family vegetable garden? Here’s step-by-step instructions on starting seeds and getting your kids involved.

How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids (Two photos, both of small white children leaning over bowls of dirt with their hands in it)

Watching my kids plunge their hands into a mix of seed starting mix and water on our back deck, I know there’s something simply right about what we’re doing. And messy. Very messy.

But after planning a garden with kids, seed starting is the next logical step. While I could fill my backyard garden with seedlings from the farmers’ market, starting everything from seed is both cheaper and more rewarding. It helps the kids see the full life-cycle of plants, from seed to fruit and back to seed again. It’s also a great way to get them involved before spring shows up.

So every year, I flip through the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, order too much, and start the process of bringing up seedlings. (If you’re not in the Southeast U.S., Home for the Harvest has a great list of sustainable vegetable seed companies.) While my older son (nicknamed Sprout, appropriately) has helped start seeds the last few years, my younger son started helping this year too.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

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What Happens When You Just Trust Kids to Play?

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Young white boy looking at a large artificial mountain with green slides coming down the front of it

Kids of all ages and sizes were swarming a giant, gray artificial mountain. If it didn’t have green slides down the face of it, it would be easy to mistake for real rock. My older son stood on a small hill in front of it, taking in the scene. Then he ran down the hill with a yell, ready to scramble up the rock face.

Last weekend, we went to Badlands Playspace, the closest thing we’re probably going to have in our area to an adventure playground. While it was inside and they didn’t have any way to set fires like the ones in Sweden, they did have the mountain and they use real power tools in their classes.

Although the facility impressed me, the kids themselves struck me the most. One could easily imagine something like this devolving into a Lord of the Flies scenario, with utterly dangerous chaos. Sure, they tell you that kids need to take risks, but you don’t really believe it, right?

But what I saw gave me faith.

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