do you all have any good easy kids crafts that they can do in or with garden stuff?

i have a 10 yr old boy and we love doing thing outside and he usually plants potatoes because he likes to dig then up .

any ides to have some more fun in the garden with him. thanks kawalabear

There is a really cool book called Roots, Shoots, Buckets, & Boots. I don't recall the author. My mother gave me this. It is entirely gardening w/ and for kids. My girls & nieces all love it. Your son would be ready for some of the more advanced projects.

So teaching him how to take out weeds with a machete probably isn't what you are looking for?
(Letting my DS take out his "Pokemon", other video game anxiety, in the back 40 proved much more useful than therapy, etc, etc.) He was about 10 when I started teaching him how to use tools. None of the parents of his classmates ever objected to me teaching the boys how to use sharp yard implements. But I didn't start teaching the other kids until age 13-14.

How about some crafts using sticks out of the yard? Good Luck. At least you are getting him outdoors.

Let me at a milder idea. How about getting some plaster of paris and make some markers for the garden? I haven't played with plaster of
paris for about 30 years... but it works up fast. Perhaps you could use some of those containers sold by glad, ziploc, etc. etc. that are square, round, retangular..you know.. then you 2 could pour the stuff in the "molds", you could use macaroni letters to spell the plant name, even take a leaf from the plant for more pazzazz.

thanks. he has helped me make a trellis out of drift wood we had to tie the peices together because nail and screws just split it . it was fun and he knows how to use most tools, nothing power i wont even let my 16 yr old use my power garden power tools but thats cause i dont dont want them tore up haha.

i like the idea of the plant tags/ markers.
i have some cement so maybe we will use that so it last longer. thanks kawalabear

I grow a lot of gourds and one year I had my kids draw me their names in a simple picture on paper (the kids were about 10 and 12). I then carefully etched the drawings onto the gourds I had growing. The drawings became a permanent part of the gourd surface. I dried and painted the gourds and they turned out really neat.

Bird houses (gourds again) have been a fun project for the kids. We always manage to get at least house wrens as customers.

Here's something I'd love to do, but it's a major project. I want to make a patio sized chess/checkers board out of pavers. The board part wouldn't be too hard but the pieces would be harder. If I ever got it made though me and the kids would love it.

the checker board sounds really cool i dont think i have room for it but it would be neet if i did.

you could use flower pot saucers painted red and black. and if you used the plastic they would be light and nonbreakable and with the edges tilted up it would be easy to pick up also they would stack nicely to store.

Kids always love gourds and they put on a spectacular show. If you have a space, try some snake gourds, the kids always like to watch them develop. Ornamental gourds are fun and almost always a sure producer. With them you can do fun stuff like capturing one when it is tiny inside a small bottle or other clear container and letting it grow inside the jar.

Another thing might be sunflowers. When they're done blooming you have bird food, leading to making simple or complex bird feeders, etc.

The girls painted some nice terra cotta pots for my mother's day gift last year. This is a good craft in or outdoors. We're doing a batch for both grandmas this year. The girls love going to the greenhouse to pick out plants.

We also collected some nice slabs of granite on our fishing trip last year. I'm going to Modge-Podge dried leaves on them to use for steppers and borders in our gardens. Its just like doing a paper collage so it works for all ages.

Good luck!

I personally feel kids love gourds a lot.! I used to love it like anything. Ive been growing gourds for the past two years and that too dedicated for all the kids in my family!

Some nice simple suggestions:

1. Take a plastic mesh bag (like you'd get buying onions, shallots, oranges, whatever, and cut a small piece of the "tube, tie one end, fill with dryer ling, colored dried or plastic grass, ribbon or fabric scraps, whatever and tie the other end closed. Tie it in a tree and watch the nearby birds nests for bits of your treasures.

2. You can create a feeder by coating a large pine cone with peanut butter or lard and roll in seed. Wrap a string around one end of the cone and hang in a tree.

3. Tie ribbons to anything you'd like, a ring or a stick, and hang in a tree and watch the "fluttering".

My son decorated a tote bag at summer camp with "pounded flowers & leaves". I guess you sandwich some colorful flowers under light color fabric, and pound away with a hammer! The color transfers to the fabric & looks beautiful, and I imagine the kids love pounding!
You'd have to experiment, but I imagine anything fabric could work.

my nieces & i put together seed tapes using flour/water mix as glue & our favorite seed mixtures on the paper. I teaches them about seed diversity/ plant requirements. Plus its a slimy fun mess project that if it gets out of hand soap/water and a good load of laundry can handle.
We found the how to in an issue of OG. Next we are going to try salad balls also found in OG.