Making Montessori Ours In The Garden

Every year I share some of our fun in the garden. The kids plan, plant, water and observe the goings on in the garden throughout our growing season. We are in Ontario, Canada so our season is approx from May - Oct.



We have a small(ish) veg garden that is such a yearly pleasure. Gardening in any form be it large or container gardens are absolutely mesmerizing for children.

We also have a little herb section by our back door in a perennial bed.  Some years our herb selection is large and others on the small side. Herbs provide fun sensory opportunities for your kids to smell, touch and taste leaves early in the garden. Xander loves to taste what ever he can.

We have bare spots in the garden for the kids to dig around and check out the soil and friends living in it.

We keep a large plate/bowl outside nearby for them to pick and collect. They are always checking growth stages, and on the hunt for ripening veg.

To ensure our garden is very kid exploring friendly we try to leave a good deal of room around plants so they can walk thought certain spots in the garden to harvest at their leisure.

We put cages around tomatoes and pepper plants right away and the kids naturally walk a little further around them, and they also protect the plants from stray balls and yard toys since our garden in right where the kids play. We always mark our seed rows with garden twine so they know exactly where they are planted.

We've had many visitors to the garden this year and have added a couple of new bird feeders.
We love perennial gardening as this is a continual living and evolving opportunity for studying plants, insects,birds and so much more.

Gardening is hard work and there have been many years where we have completely scaled back or let things go, become overgrown or miss out on some harvesting. 

Life is very busy for us as it is for most, and we made the decision a long time ago to move with the flow of our family. 

 Every year brings new challenges and we do what we feel we can manage. This year spring was so busy for us with vacation and visiting family that our seeds went in super late. We almost didn't plant them, but decided it would be a cool opportunity for the kids to see how they fair or even grow at all!

Something else that was super cool - We were gifted a Space Tomato Plant!!!
One of our fantastic home school group moms participates with her children in Tomatoshere go check it out!!

                                      Tomatosphere

I hope you are all having fun with some form of gardening!

We have some fantastic inspiration pinned

 if you wish to check it out!