COLLEGE STATION — Teaching children how to garden can help them blossom into more wholesome adults.
But before they get dirt on their hands, a few strokes on a computer keyboard might produce some fun and useful hints from horticulturists around the world.
kinderGARDEN (cq) is a new home page on the World Wide Web set up by Texas A&M University horticulture graduate student Tina Waliczek with the guidance of Dr. Jayne Zajicek, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station ornamental horticulturist, to introduce “the many ways children can interact with plants and the outdoors.”
“Many organizations feel that troubled children could handle their problems better if they had a better self-esteem,” notes Waliczek on the colorful home page. “Studies have shown evidence that when people interact with plants, it can actually benefit some of the psychological aspects of their life, such as self- esteem and interpersonal relationships.”
kinderGARDEN, which can be found at http://aggie- horticulture.tamu.edu/kinder/index.html, lets children skip electronically through school gardens, community gardens and botanic gardens. Or they can jump straight to the fun page to find wheelbarrow loads of crafts and activities or an online Mr. Edible Starch Tuber Head designer game.
“Through the fun page, we would like to encourage children to get involved with plants,” Waliczek said. “This page has examples of fun, educational and inexpensive activities.”
A stop at the School Gardens page provides teachers with several exercises on topics such as “Where does soil come from?” how to make a terrarium, “What travels in air?”
Instructors planning a school gardening project will find several considerations to help determine whether to begin such a massive project. A step-by-step guide also is offered for schools that have found an ideal location for a garden.
Likewise, the community gardening site provides how-to information for a much larger effort and points to many resources that can be used in making such plans. Where space is a premium, kids are shown how rooftop gardening is successful in some large cities among apartment dwellers.
Botanical gardens accessed through kinderGARDEN take children an a colorful photo-trip of many of the world’s most beautiful locations showing places such as where plants are grown to attract butterflies or macaws in a rainforest setting.
The educational aspect of kinderGARDEN is not lost on the childish desire for fun. The site’s fun page offers lists of good child-oriented gardening books, information about edible flowers, and related kids’ cookbooks, and games such as one where kids can select features on the computer to draw a face on a potato.
“Gardens can be therapeutic for people,” Waliczek said. “There are many opportunities available for children to become involved with plants, gardens or the outdoors in general. kinderGARDEN is one place where they can learn how.”
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