Green Thumbs: A Kid's Activity Guide to Indoor and Outdoor Gardening

Green Thumbs is an easy to understand and fun activity book. Not only do my children enjoy the book, my husband and I have found serveral creative ways to garden.

I never knew milk jugs were so versatile! They can me made into shovels, totes, watering cans, scarecrows, bird-feeders... This book offers creative, inexpensive ways to teach kids about gardening and plants in general. What a great way to learn! All the lessons involve a hands-on activity, not just for fun, but for learning. Kids learn how plants absorb water by putting food-coloring in the water of a cut white carnation. Kids learn that some birds help plants by eating bugs, but some birds eat fruit; hence, the milk-jug scarecrow. Seeds are sprouted in a baggy in a window to demonstrate roots, stem, leaves, and how it all starts. Then, of course, there is plenty of standard gardening activities: starting seeds indoors in paper egg-cartons, planting outdoors after frost, watering, composting, mulching... There are a few ideas I never would have thought of, for instance, collecting different seeds around the neighborhood just to watch the ways different weeds sprout and grow--in containers, of course. This book has a very organic approach to gardening, teaching kids to maintain topsoil, make bug-spray from garlic... I anticipate that my kids will be quite educated about plants and gardens by the time we finish this book. I also expect that my yard will look quite littered with milk jugs. But I'm glad this is not just a book about cutesy activities with plants. Real educational projects are usually a little messy; in this case, milk-juggy.

I love this book. Yes, much of the information can be found online, but I wouldn't have thought to look up some of these things. If you're already an experienced gardener, this book may be a waste of time, but if you're a beginner and want to get your kids involved, it's great for motivating the 'budding' gardener. This book is full of ideas for making gardening tools and materials using everyday household objects, like empty milkjugs (you can do many things with those!), muffin tins, 2-liter bottles, egg cartons, etc. There are recipes for natural, homemade bug sprays, pest strips, composting, and more. I found it informative as well. There are bits of information about butterflies and how to attract them, weeds, worms, pests, helpful plants(what grows well with what) and critters, growing plants from leaf cuttings, tasty recipes using things you've grown, making herbed butter, starting your outdoor garden, growing seedlings indoors, making birdfeeders, gourd rattles, catnip bags, and lots more good stuff...and all using things you have around the house. A great resource for the beginners and kids who like crafty things.