Teach kids and save by growing a garden

Today’s Finance Friday Tip is to encourage parents to teach your kids and save money by growing a vegetable garden.

Most kids love being hands on. Growing a vegetable garden is a great way to see what is going on in your environment and to also learn where the food we eat comes from. Of course, there are also numerous  lessons, which can be taught by growing a garden such as:

  1. Patience – Once the seed is placed in the garden children will have to learn to wait until the seeds sprouts in order for them to see results.
  2. Nature nurture – In order for plants to grow children will learn the basics of providing for something. For instance, just because you put the seed in the ground and wish for the plant to grow, doesn’t mean it will; unless the seed is planted in good soil, given water, and adequate sunlight.
  3. Simple science – Gardening depends on so many natural factors such as weather, seasons, nutrients, and growth stages. By gardening children will be given a basic foundation of reproduction, pollination, and a plant’s life cycle.
  4. Maintenance – A good lesson for children to learn from gardening is to keep monitoring their seedlings and plants. Children will need to look out for bugs and other external factors to make sure their plants will yield a crop; of course, they will find out that sometimes it will and sometimes it will not. It may be noteworthy to keep a record of what helps plants in your garden to grow and what factors may hinder growth.
  5. Grocery savings– Shopping for produce in the store can be expensive. A fun lesson to do with your child around harvest time is to take your kid to the store and go through the aisles and calculate how much you have saved as a family by growing your own produce instead of purchasing them. This lesson will motivate you as well as your children to continue cultivating your vegetable garden.
  6. Healthy eating habits – Another activity worth exploring together is to look up which vitamins and nutrients can be found in certain plants.

Financial Parallel

The same lessons are true in Finance. You must to have patience in order for your money to experience  growth. If you are trying to build your savings account. Find the best interest rate a bank offers and continue to nurture the account by consistently adding money to it. Then over time you will be able to see your deposits grow tremendously, just maintain a close watch over your accounts and make sure that your money is receiving the attention it needs; especially when external factors are involved. Often when the economy is doing poorly banks interests rates will drop so although a savings account is a low-risk account, make sure your bank is still offering a competitive rate. As your money grows be careful when you decide to withdraw funds by developing healthy spending habits so the money is saved rather then spent.

Additional Resources

 

Image Credit: I learn a lot of my vegetable gardening tips from my friend at BetterGrowGirl.

Disclosure: The Amazon link above is an affiliate link.

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