Encouraging those little green fingers! (Get Gardening!)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Get Gardening!
Date:	19/08/08 (177 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fab book

Disadvantages: none

Get Gardening is a fabulous book aimed at small children who would like to get involved in gardening projects. It doesn't really matter whether you have a big or small garden or even no garden at all because there is something for everyone in this book as there are both indoor and outdoor projects.

After a small introductory section at the front that looks at the magic of plants and growing tips, the book is actually divided into three main sections - Indoor Fun, Great Gardens and Grow your Own. Each of these sections have a number of exciting (and sometimes zany0 projects for children to carry out - either on their own or with the help of an adult. All of the projects are set out in the same way starting with a list of what you need. This is followed by very clear step by step instructions which are very easy to follow especially because they are accompanied by lovely photographs that show you exactly what you should be doing. There are also symbols on all of the project pages which tell the best time of the year to carry out the project, how long the plants will take to grow and whether it is an indoor or an outdoor project. The level of difficulty is represented by one, two or three stars. Because my daughters are both very young we have mainly concentrated on the one star projects.

I'm now going to tell you about just one project from each of the sections and what we thought about them.

In the Indoor Fun section, both my daughters were very excited by the pictures they saw on the 'Crazy hair Day' project so I knew that this was one we were going to have to do. Also as it only has one star it was relatively easy. The idea is to have different size pots onto which you can paint or stick faces. Get some different grass seeds which you will find in your local garden centre and sprinkle seeds in each pot once they have been filled with gravel and compost. Then all you have to do is leave them in a light place, keep them moist and wait to see what happens. Before long the grass starts to grow in weird and wonderful ways and it definitely looks like the pots are having bad hair days! It's great because they can keep an eye on how the grass is growing every day and it causes a lot of laughter too!

In the Great gardens section we have had a go at the Tallest Sunflowers mainly because this has tied in with growing projects at school and nursery. The step by step instructions are very clear and the girls love going out with their watering cans and watering the seeds - they even want to do this when it has been raining. Our sunflowers are still growing though and it will take a while to see which one does actually grow the tallest as this one is a four month project. I do find that with my girls being quite young, they do tend to get impatient a bit so normally at this age it's better to look for the shorter project. I was surprised that this one also had three stars for difficulty but maybe it's because they do have to look after them over a long period of time.

In the Grow your Own section there is a fabulous quick project where the girls can se results very quickly. This is where they make a glass garden and so long as you can find a glass bowl they are away. They cover the bottom with compost and crushed gravel and then find small house plants to start growing. They can also decorate the inside with things like marbles or even little toys which is what my youngest decided to do. You cover the top with cling film and leave in a warm place. Soon you will have a lovely indoor garden and both my daughters are very proud of theirs!

This is such an inspiring book for children and so well thought out too. You look at the lovely photographs and it really makes you want to do the things in the book. The pages are all wipe clean so it does not matter about any spills and there are lots of helpful tips all over the place. It really helps them to learn and to understand how plants grow and how you need to look after them. In our house, it is really Daddy who is the gardener in the family so it's good that through this book he can do some lovely things with his girls.

The book is from Marks and Spencers and only costs £5 which I think is excellent value and even more so when I bought it as it was in a 'three for two' offer.

We really do recommend this book and it should provide hours of interest and fun.

Summary: a great book to encourage a love of gardening