Learning About Growing Food

Awhile back I saw a great post about teaching children where food comes from. (I don't recall who's blog I saw this on, so, if it was yours please contact me so I can give you credit.) I've been wanting to try this with little A and we have finally gotten around to it.

Here's how it goes... You take some potatoes or carrots or some other root-type vegetable you might have on hand and you put it in a pot of dirt (real dirt is best because some children can have an allergic reaction to the fertilizers in potting soil). You want to leave a little bit of the veggie poking out of the soil so that the kiddo knows to dig it out. Our carrots didn't have any greens but this would've been a lot better if they had.

We tried digging with the trowel, but that didn't go over so well. We just ended up getting dirt everywhere. So Little A just dug in with her fingers.

Little A seemed amazed that a carrot (something she eats quite often) could've been "hiding" in that dirt. 

I explained to her that lots of foods, called vegetables, actually grow in the ground. If you grow those vegetables, you can dig them up and eat them. But before we eat vegetable that grow in the ground, we have to wash them.

After several handfuls of dirt got put in the water, she finally got that she needed to rinse the carrots off. 

All in all, Little A really enjoyed this activity and I think it planted the seed (no pun intended) of knowing where our food comes from. As a follow up to this, we watched Sid the Science Kid on PBS. The episode we watched did a great job of explaining how food is grown and how it can be harvested for a snack. 

I cooked up the carrots for dinner that night, along with some yummy salmon. She scarfed all the carrots down and asked for more. Score one for good eating!

Bon apetit!