Mommy University received the Indoor Gardening Kit from Green Toys in exchange for an honest review.
One of my favorite memories in childhood is attempting to grow beans in Kindergarten. There is a power when you are the one responsible for watering and caring for this little seed and watching it develop into a plant. There is a magic wrapped up in dirt which children enjoy watching unfold. As a parent, I want my children to have magic beans. I want them to become mesmerized with the growth spurts that take place when caring for a small plant.
The Green Toys Indoor Gardening Kit consists of nine pieces: three pots, a peadpod planter tray, three packets of seeds (sunflowers, zinnias, and basil), trowel and potting soil cubes. In my recent review of the Green Toys Watering Can, I listed the benefits of playing with this toy which is commonly associated and used in the garden. While both can be played together as we did, they offer overlapping benefits (such as sensory play) but in this review I want to emphasize the benefits more strongly tied to the Indoor Gardening Kit.
The Green Toys Watering Can and Indoor Gardening Kit pair very well together so that children take ownership of their own garden.
Educational Benefits of
Green Toys Indoor Gardening Kit
Promotes an Appreciation for Science
In order for most plants to thrive they need: sun, water, and dirt. As you are planting the seeds discuss what each plant needs in order to grow. Also, talk about what happens if a plant gets too much or too little of those necessities. For older children, a discussion on native plants is a good topic.
The Green Toys Indoor Gardening Kit is a great start for a child’s container garden. It offers three separate planters with different seeds for each of them. The opportunity for contrast and comparison is going to be prevalent as each plant will have a different appearance and offers our lives different benefits. Younger children can keep a journal (with words or drawings) of what the plants look like after every few days. It is a great introduction to the scientific process.
The design of the Indoor Gardening Kit includes the opportunity to grow three different plants.
Fosters Patience
As much as the seeds included don’t have large requirements, the fourth element needed for them to grow is time. For young children, patience is a quality that is learned. The recommended age for this toy is five years and older and trust me children this age do not possess a lot of patience. However, what I like about the Indoor Gardening Kit is that it contains three separate planters and thus plants will grow at different paces. This means that as children are checking in on the plants each day it will look different. This encourages them to return every day to check the progress. These are wonderful opportunities to talk about how the plant needs nourishment and time. Acknowledge how patient your child has been in the process. When they are older, they may want to dedicate all three planters to growing one plant.
Encourages an Appreciation of Nature
Gardening, for some, is an act of meditation. For others, gardening is to improve the look of the home or to grow food. However, all forms stem from an appreciation of nature. By growing their own plants, children begin to understand the scientific requirements needed as well as the time factor. Children can make a larger connection to trees, forests and tropical rainforests. More importantly, they develop a true appreciation for the world that surrounds them and what has to take place to care for it.
My daughter enjoys checking in on the plants and watching them grow.
For young children the Indoor Gardening Kit has three separate planters with three different plants which offers children three times the number of plants to observe growing. Basil is a healthy herb that can be used in cooking. You can teach your child how to trim the leaves and use in a special dish. Sunflowers are an uplifting flower but their seeds are food for birds and healthy snacks for us. While zinnias are flowers that offer aesthetic beauty as well as support pollinators like bees.
Ultimately, children will have to demonstrate responsibility to grow the plants by watering them on a regular basis and checking to see if they need more or less sun. They are learning the needs of the plant and responding to its needs based on how it grows. For example, if the soil is dry the plant requires more water. This is a good opportunity for conversations about responsibility, observation and taking care of nature.
My son loves watering his garden and I love that he is learning about responsibility.
Green Toys is an Eco-Friendly company that takes plastic milk jugs and recycles them into toys. It is a toy company that truly takes a proactive approach to creating a better environment for future generations by turning plastic once discarded into innovative and fun toys. Personally, I love the look and design of the toys and the Indoor Gardening Kit is no exception. It is the perfect introduction to gardening for little ones which can be kept indoors or out.
You can learn more about Green Toys products at greentoys.com. You can also purchase your own Indoor Gardening Kit using this amazon.com affiliate link. Happy Gardening!