Growing Your Own Food, While Expanding a Child's Horizons

Gardening is a means for children to learn how to practice lifelong healthy food choices. It enables interaction and bonding between parent and child and gives all members of the family a productive and educational hobby.  A child's curiosity and love of playing in the soil makes them a natural gardener and Backyard Farmers will help enable you to create a fun and enjoyable learning environment.

Children and Healthy Eating:  Healthy eating kid's diets start early on with organic recipes for baby food from the garden.  As time goes by, the connection created between parents and children in the garden and with their food, will enhance the entire family's communication capacity for years to come. The natural world is full of wonder and your children (or grandchildren) will become more environmentally aware while playing and learning in their own backyard.  It gets even better when they bring the produce the helped grow indoors or to the grill, and together the family cooks a meal full of intense flavor and dense in nutrients.  

Watch a child experiencing a garden - it is a world of discovery beyond compare.  Digging potatoes is like uncovering buried treasure, watching beans and peas they planted push upward through the soil is exhilarating, and sampling cherry tomatoes from the vine beats candy every time.  Backyard Farmers President, Al Benner and his wife Deena are proud parents of twin 5 year old boys - Owen and Coleman.  The boys have grown up around the garden, orchard, and chickens each summer and the experience continues to enrich them in countless ways.  From planting seeds to sampling the snap peas fresh on the vine, or making homemade applesauce and peach pies, the connections to nature, family bonding, and teaching moments are endless.   When children are involved with raising their own food they are much more likely to eat that food, and in turn develop into individuals with healthy eating habits that will stay with them a lifetime.   This past summer when the Benner boys were nowhere to be found they were either in the garden or up in the peach tree! 

Growing food is also an incredibly valuable outlet for extra physical energy, yet at the same time helps kids to focus and slow down. It offers a diversion from T.V. , video games, and computers.  It is a proven fact that when children experience nature they become more focused and become more relaxed.  Did you know that in the spectrum of light, green is the most soothing color to the brain?  Standing in a garden does wonders for anyone feeling stressed or anxious.   And of course for those older kids, did we forget to mention work ethic :) ?

New Study:  Gardening Makes Children Happy

New research suggests that taking part in gardening can make a child feel happy and boost their development.
 
The study of 1,300 teachers and 10 schools was commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in London. It found children in schools that encouraged gardening became more resilient, confident and lived healthier lives. The RHS says school and home gardening should be used as key teaching tools, rather than as an extra-curricular activity.

Researchers found that teachers who used gardening as part of learning said it helped improve a child's readiness to learn. They also said it encouraged pupils to become more active in solving problems, as well as boosting literacy and numeracy skills. The report said: "Fundamental to the success of school gardens in stimulating a love of learning was their ability to translate sometimes dry academic subjects into practical, real world experiences."  
Learning by doing is always more fun and more memorable - it's a proven fact.   Watch our video here

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