A lot of the actual prep work had to be done by Jed and I.  There was just no way Jack and Nora were going to be able to pull out huge weeds and till the soil.  But.. they really loved trying.  We gave Jack a shorter tool and piece of the land where their were easier weeds and he dug and dug.  He felt pretty good when he got some weeds up and he would show them to my husband and I and yell, “Holy cow!  This is a huge one!”  We had him make his own pile of weeds so he could feel satisfaction in how big that pile got.

My two year old on the other hand was off in dream land. We tried giving her a tiny shovel or having her pull weeds but she was not interested.  We did give her the task of moving weeds to a larger pile of weeds and she seemed to like that and it grabbed her attention for a little while.  The biggest thing I had to realize and embrace is that Nora was going to get DIIIIIRTY, but that it was totally okay.  She loved playing in the mud, she found worms, she moved weeds and we hosed her off at the end.  Overall she had fun, and I think that was more important then anything.

One task they both really liked was planting the seeds.  Jed and I marked our rows with wooden stakes and yarn, so we would know where everything was.  We gave Jack and Nora the stakes and they were able to put them in the ground, we just helped push them in.  We put holes in the dirt and Jack and Nora got to plant the seeds.  I just gave them one at a time and told them to put them in the holes and to cover the holes with a little bit of dirt.  They loved this part.  Jack even put a worm in with the seed so that it had a good house and food 🙂

The biggest thing I had to learn in the gardening process is to not be too schedule oriented and to just have fun with it.  Kids take breaks, lots of breaks and I have to be okay with that.  If I am too set on getting things done quickly and efficiently it takes all the joy out of the process.  At one point the kiddos found a frog and just wanted to play with it, so we did.  There were LOTS of distractions but when I didn’t set any expectations or time limits for myself and embraced the distractions they were a lot of fun.