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Growing vegetables with children

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Do you grow fruit and vegetables with your children?

Children benefit so much from seeing where food really comes from – and I find they’re much more likely to try new foods if they’ve helped to grow and prepare it. A cut and come again salad is a great way to start, no matter how small your garden. Sow the seeds in a pot of compost, have the children water them and wait for the seedlings to pop up. The good thing about a cut and come again salad is just that – the children can help themselves to a few leaves and the plant will kindly grow them some more. Sow  seeds every 3-4 weeks and you’ll have a summer full of salad. Add a cherry tomato plant and let the children tuck in. The girls loved going on a treasure hunt round the garden looking for things to put in their salad and found lettuce, radish, nasturtiums and herbs. They ate the lot!

Barbeque bananas

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A delicious and easy receipe when you’re barbequeing, and just right for children, is:

Barbeque Bananas

Take one banana per person and slice down the centre. Fill the slit with chocolate chips.

Wrap each banana in a tinfoil parcel and place on the barbeque after the main courses has been cooked. The remaining heat from the coals will bake the bananas and melt the chocolate.

Unwrap* your banana parcels, add a scoop of icecream and enjoy.

*This is going to be hot of course, so leave it to a grownup who’s wearing oven gloves.

Why not use a disposable barbeque and head off for a picnic in the great outdoors?

works for me wednesday at we are that family

Bean bag games

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Have some fun with bean bags!

We have four colours of bean bags so we chose four coloured chalks to match.  We drew four different shapes and numbered them 1 to 4. Then it was time to play.

Have a go at colour matching – can you throw the blue bean bag into the blue shape?

Have a go with numbers – can you throw a bean bag onto the number 1? onto the number 2?

 

 

Have a go with shapes – can you throw all the bean bags into the circle?

 

 

With older children you can let them throw at the targets and add up the scores as you go along.

Pebble art

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We have the great pleasure of having another guest post today. Please welcome Maggie from Red Ted Art with ideas for combining nature and art…

Over at Red Ted Art, my son (Red Ted (2)) and I (Maggy (old)) do lots of crafts projects. Sometimes Pip Squeak (0) joins us. Usually I am inspired by books that we read (the tagline from another crafty mum being – story + art = great stART). This time however, we were Inspired by Nature as well as the Arts! (come visit “Get Crafty” for a host of nature related ideas):

The V&A is running a World Beach Project with artist Sue Lawty. This is a project involving sculptures and pictures made from stones. Check out the V&A website for more info. Here is Sue Lawty’s project.

We couldn’t get to a beach, but still wanted to “take part”, so friends of ours brought us some Brighton Beach stones and we got Inspired by Nature at home… we have 6 BIG stones and lots of pebbles from the garden.

*** PLEASE TAKE CARE WITH THE PEBBLES AND SMALL CHILDREN – DO NOT LEAVE THEM ALONE – CHOKING HAZARD***

This is what we got up to:

Whilst playing with the stones we learnt lots of things:

“Just Feeling” – enjoying nature and playing with the pebbles. They feel nice, don’t they?!

Lots here:

  • Big & Little. Which is the biggest? Which is the smallest?
  • Counting 1-6.
  • Shapes – e.g.  Triangle.
  • Heavy. Red Ted told me that some were “heavy”…
  • Warm & Cold. He also pointed out to me, that after we had left the m in the garden overnight that they were cold (“Brrrrr, mummy, brrr”) and could I warm them up (beep beep beep – I am ashamed to admit, that that means the microwave).

And finally! Some “artwork” and some playing (Red Ted did the flower pattern when I had turned my back).

Happy & Sad! We made a stone caterpillar with petals for eyes. Turn the stone one way and he is sad (“hungry mummy”), turn the stone the other way and he is happy!

Hurray for Brighton Beach stone (and pebbles from the garden)!

If you enjoyed this post, do pop over to Red Ted Art and see what we get up to on a regular basis – Get Inspired by Nature in Nature Get Crafty or just visit for Wednesday Crafts!! We look forward to meeting you!

Maggy & Red Ted (& sometimes Pip Squeak)

Homemade ice lollies

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For hot and cranky kids these homemade ice lollies are just the thing to cool down, and to make sure they’re getting enough fluids in hot weather. It’s great to have a batch ready for when they get home from school and they’re feeling frazzled.

You can use fruit to make your own juices, or use cartons of bought fruit juice.  If you’re using shop bought juice it’s worth checking the ingredients label if you want to avoid added sugar. We went with apple and mango juices, but the choice is yours.

To make multi-coloured layer lollies: Part fill your lolly containers with a fruit juice. Pop in the freezer until frozen.

Top up with a different juice…

Then put your lolly sticks on top. Pop them back in the freezer until they’re all frozen and you have them ready and waiting for the next lot of sunshine.

Happily shared with Works For Me Wednesday

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