Some of you might know that we have an allotment as I share snippets of our time there on our IG grid. Many times I have been asked how we manage the kids while we are there and what do the kids help with so I thought I would share some of the things the kids enjoy doing and what do I do to ensure we have a pleasant time at our veggie garden.

We have had the allotment since four years now and we share the site with another lovely family (the founders of our all time favourite lollies Lickalix) and between us all we have four children in between 0-7 years old.

Very early we discovered that the key to kids enjoying the allotment is to make sure they have their own set of easy tasks to complete (and plenty of snacks!). They do not like to do everything, so we try and allocate them considering what each child likes most. For example, Oliver loves digging while Ariana enjoys planting more. All the kids absolutely LOVE picking strawberries and raspberries and these never make it home with us 🙂

So my tips for a successful allotments day are:

  • bring plenty of snacks
  • allocate a couple of tasks to each child so they feel useful and part of the ‘team’
  • bring games like puzzles or figures for free play.
  • go in blocks of a couple of hours, too long and kids get restless
  • bring a friend of the kids along for longer days

The things the kids help woth are:

  • preparing the ground. Oliver enjoys the digging in March preparing the soil fro planting in spring and summer.
  • Ariana enjoys helping with the potting and growing the seeds at home to them plant at the allotment.
  • both kids enjoy picking. Their favourites to pick are the fruits because they eat them as they pick them, but they also help with beans and peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes.
  • digging for potatoes. They both like this and play competitions to see who gets more potatoes out of the ground and who gets the largest.

I think kids learn to enjoy things as they go, so don’t get frustrated if they complain the first few times. These two have learnt to search for lady bugs, play with butterflies, dig for worms and recognise different types of birds and now enjoy these things and ask to go to the allotment to do more of it.

A lot of other allotment people say that it is a great idea to leave a space for the kids to grow their own plants. I have given the kids a space in our garden at home for this and Ariana is growing flowers instead of vegetables. I think the important thing is to let kids discover nature and understand where food comes from and that it takes time and effort for this to happen. The rest is just getting dirty and having fun and we all know kids are experts at this!

The kids are wearing Molo clothes from our favourite clothing store Childrensalon. You can read more about kids and allotment life here in a lovely blog post done in collaboration with Childrensalon.

Ariana’s outfit

Oliver’s outfit