Our gardening gift set is perfect for spring, now that everyone is pruning, planting, and planning, and Fairfax Family Fun is providing a couple of items to help families have fun outdoors. The first is a new copy of the book The Nature Connection by Clare Walker Leslie, a highly rated (5 stars on Amazon) “outdoor workbook” for kids, families, and classrooms. The softcover, 304-page book is designed to get the whole family to discover plants and animals in their backyards and beyond.
Filled with easy-to-understand information about flora, fauna, and natural phenomena, the book has suggestions for fun discoveries, checklists, activity sheets, and spaces for kids to make their own drawings and jot their findings. Kids will learn about plants, flowers, insects, animal habitats, moon phases, wetlands, and more. An added bonus: the book is organized by month to provide different ideas as the seasons change. There’s also a very handy appendix with safety tips, suggestions for getting kids to appreciate the outdoors, and an extensive bibliography and recommended websites.
To help you put all these to good use, our friends at Cox Farms are joining in on the fun and have donated a $20 gift card! Cox Farms right now has lots of plants and flowers, and the combo pots and hanging baskets are especially gorgeous! The farm also has a good selection of veggie and herb plants (15+ varieties of tomatoes, 12+ varieties of peppers). And of course, they’ll have the summer produce soon, just in time for the Fourth of July!
Our favorite gardening activity is watching everything that we planted begin to come to life.
Spending time in my garden is the most relaxing part of my day. I love bringing my 3 year old along occasionally and letting him dig in the ground and help me plant and tend the garden.
My boys love to play in the dirt with me. Apparently, the seeds we started weren’t enough for them this year. They’ve made me buy more plants each week at the farm market, too. On the positive side, we already have our first tomatoes and squash.
I love to grow veggies, then try new recipes with them.
I enjoy gardening and am starting a veggie garden. We currently have a cut flower garden.
I love being outside with my kids!
My family wants/needs to garden but doesn’t have the tools yet.
I love being outside with my daughter and watching her explore things around her. She loves smelling flowers now 🙂
My kids enjoy planting beans and tending to them until they flourish. 🙂
Being able to feed my family with veggies we grow together!!!
I love having my son pick out something to grow and the excitement of him watching it progress!
What a WONDERFUL giveaway!!! My 6yr old just went to a school trip to Loudoun Heritage Farm and learned all about plants!!! He loved it!!!
The kids are really into birds and butterflies right now, but we are trying out a smail raised garden box for them to see if that helps spark an interest in growing veggies!
We love to pick and eat our fresh tomatoes.
I love to combine my love for birds and gardening by creating bird-friendly habitats.
My favorite part about gardening is going into my backyard for fresh produce rather than digging around the rotten produce in stores!
We love searching for worms in the dirt!
We love to pick our our fruit! Especially berries!
My girls love the water and plant flowers in the spring. This is would be great to learn from
Planting rhubarb, then making pies out of it!
tomatoes! It’s how my son learned to eat them, since he grew them
We need to brighten up the yard a bit
I love the idea of having a vegetable garden.
We love planting herbs and vegetables then trying new recipes with them.
My favorite gardening activity is having my 2.5 yr old son help my plant annuals in my pots. He loves to help with the potting soil and he’s very dedicated to watering them all summer! Nothing cuter in this world!
My kid knows more about gardening than I do!
We love watching all the plants and flowers grow!!