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How to grow healthy grandchildren
Help your grandchildren beat boredom, eat healthily and keep fit by introducing them to the joys of gardening this year
If you spend a lot of time with your grandchildren while their parents are at work, or during the school holidays, you may find that gardening and having fun with the children is an ideal activity to do together. Plus, skills, even just tiny ones, can be transferred to the next generation.
With child obesity fuelled by junk food and inactivity, and the media focus at the same time firmly fixed on environmental issues, sowing the seeds of a love for gardening in your grandchildren seems like the perfect solution.
After all, what child turns his nose up at food he has made himself, even if it is a vegetable ?
It's a great time for children to get exercise and fresh air, as well as learning responsibility and harvesting and cooking vegetables.
Wilkinson Sword, who have created the Power Digging and Cultivating tools for adults and the brightly-coloured Magic Garden Tools For Kids, offer the following tips for gardening with the grandchildren.
- You can make the vegetable patch look fun for example, you can create a wigwam using canes when growing French beans.
- For children who want to see quick results, lettuce, radishes and turnips are quick-growing crops.
- Do a few exercises together and stretch those muscles before tackling the garden.
- Remember you don't need an allotment or vegetable patch to grow your own vegetables . Growing vegetables in containers gives the opportunity to harvest fresh, homegrown produce even where the space is limited.
- When the job is done take a picture of the family to show what has been achieved together, it will make a good talking point in the classroom.
- There is no need to worry if there is no garden space available, growing herbs in containers or window boxes is also a fantastic way for teaching children new tastes and aromas. Chervil, thyme, parsley, rosemary and sage can be sown at this time of year.
- If once the vegetables have been harvested the children are fussy about eating them, arrange the food into funny faces or blend the food into healthy sauces and put on top of jacket potatoes.
Extra advice, recipes and fun ideas for the whole family, can be found inside the booklet "Eat Fit, Keep Fit". For a free copy call Tumble Tots on 0121 585 7003.
Wilkinson Sword’s bright and colourful Magic Garden Kids Tools set is esigned so the children can find tools easily in the garden. They all have rounded tips on the handles so they are nice and smooth. All the products have light, yet durable, glass fibre plastic heads making them safe to use. There is a set of cotton gloves within the collection to protect the hands.
This article was created: 6 March 2007.
This article was last edited: 26 June 2007.
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