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It’s National Children’s Gardening Week and a great excuse to get outside, have fun getting messy and teach the kids about sustainability with our 3 easy activities…
1. Recycle and grow ♻?
If you’re anything like us, with the kids at home you’re probably going through loads of yoghurt and toilet rolls! So turn the empties into something fun and teach them about recycling by reusing them for growing cress. It’s easy and can be done with no outside space. You can buy seeds in most supermarkets, garden centres and lots of places online.
- First, get your little one to decorate the clean yoghurt pot or empty toilet roll while you sit with a brew. Silly faces are a must
- Next, for the toilet roll we need a little bottom for it. You can either turn an egg box upside down and sit the roll on top of a peak. Or make several cuts around one end about an inch apart and fold the cut sections in towards the centre of the roll. Make sure its flat and then stick down with a little sellotape.
- Fill your pots with compost until its two-thirds full. Sprinkle a little water to wet the soil (but don’t drench it). Add a few seeds to each pot and top with a little more soil. Pop them in a sunny place, like a window sill and watch your little ones check back each day to see if they’ve grown! Make sure the soil doesn’t dry out
- Enjoy cress in salads, egg sandwiches, add to soups and sauces, or our fave, blend with some spinach, mango and pineapple juice to make a dinosaur smoothie!
2. The science experiment ??
Unlike traditional baby wipes, ours contain zero plastic and are made from plant fibres so they’re 100% biodegradable. It’s tricky explaining what biodegradable means to little ones so show them instead.
- Grab a wipe and a trowel and find a little area in your borders with some space
- Ask your child to dig a small hole and bury one baby wipe. Explain how the wipe is going to get really small and disappear!
- Take a photo so you can remember what it looks like and where it’s buried
- Cover back over with soil and use a lolly pop stick to mark where you have buried it
- Check back in 4-6 weeks to see if the experiment has worked!
If you haven’t got a garden you can do this in a pot with some compost. It will still degrade but might take a little longer without Mr Worm helping things along.
Fun fact – if you have a compost bin, you can dispose of our wipes that you’ve used for hands, faces and surfaces in there. Soiled ones (poo!) can be disposed of in your normal bin and will still biodegrade at landfill
3. Make a bug hotel ?
Baked beans are a fave in our house. Here’s a fun way to turn the old tins into a bug house. Bugs are important for helping plants to grow, are natural pesticides and help things, like our baby wipes, degrade!
- Go on a scavenger hunt with your kids around your house, garden, park or woods. Collect sticks, acorns, dead leaves, wood, tree bark, toilet rolls, egg cartons, stones as well as any scraps of cotton material, old plant pots or broken tiles
- Clean out your tins and remove the label. You can leave them bare or have the kids paint them with any leftover waterproof paint
- Tie the tins together with some string in any shape you want. Or you could glue the sides with silicon glue or super glue
- Stuff each tin with all the treasure you collected
- Pop it somewhere in your garden on the ground where it’ll be protected from wind and balls and away from any food you may be growing. It will also work on a balcony next to some flower pots
- Keep checking back to see what little creatures have moved in ?
We’d love to see your pics of you and your little ones outdoors. Share them on Instagram.
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