Oh, many possibilities for fun in the garden just by using your imagination & giving time to children. These are some things I've done with my kids & my great-niece & nephew. -Play hide & seek using a variety of animal figures easily carried about by children at a price you can afford to have them chipped. Even kids' meal toys work as minis. Leave them out spring-fall until needing to put away during frosty winter weather. -Allow some of the mini plastic toys to bathe in the birdbaths. Children can't resist playing in the water. -Play I spy describing what you see in the garden. -Clear paths for them to know where to walk. Encourage them to patrol the garden looking for ... a butterfly, a bird, a pink flower, a ripe tomato or strawberry, etc. without you right behind them. Then they come back to you where you're in the garden to get you to come see. That way you get garden work done & they burn off a bit of energy in the double backing to you. Helps you be less frustrated with having a child in the garden with you when there's work to be done. (Can also have them prepare the table for snack or lunch, pick flowers, set table, pick garnishes, etc. If you've taught them which flowers are edible, they will enjoy snipping those, too. Be sure to communicate which & how much are okay for cutting that day, so you're not devastated by a crew cut kid job. -Give a hint of something that you know is already in there, so it's easier for them to find. -Kid size garden tools & gloves. -Kid size chair or oversized chair so you can sit together on the same one. -Have chairs easy to move to shade if a hot day or have chairs in both locations sun & shade. -Bubbles - as a surprise you pull out of your basket or bag as a regular part of gardening together. There are spill proof bubbles as well, which are ideal for younger kids. -Let them paint structures with water & clean paintbrushes on a dry day. Craft sponge brushes or the cheap dollar store brushes work just fine and if they get too dirty to clean up you can toss them. The water makes it look darker & it dries soon enough not leaving a trace of their "painting". If you have some mild cleaner & a scrub brush nearby they might even clean the furniture for you at the same time. Be prepared to get a bit wet. -On hot days make fruit juice popsicles the night before or early in morning to take out during a break. -Take a beverage & snack out with you in a small cooler. -Planned breaks from working to sit, snack, or play games. -Have a back pack filled with teddy bear picnic items: book, mini tea set, tablecloth & napkins, & of course the bear. -Have a basket & kid craft scissor just for them to harvest herbs, salad greens, peas, or other easy to harvest things that they can also carry in the basket to the hose to wash. Then include their things in the meal preparation for the family later. Ask them for "their oregano" for the spaghetti, which they'll proudly offer. Compliment them on the aroma & be sure to compliment them when serving the family meal. Let them use herbs as garnish or help them make tea for everyone & serve it. -Plan ahead a bit for the gardening time to include work & play as kids won't want to work as long as you or stay on task nearly as well. Sometimes, by asking them what they'd like to do you might be surprised that turning compost with the large pitchfork is their desire, not playing checkers in the shade. Be prepared to finish what they start & can't. -Seems like anything mini is a delight to school age kids. Give them a mystery to solve or a job to do & they're on their way. Younger preschool children need a lot more direct supervision & assistance, but can still learn to enjoy the garden space if you have something just for them. They especially want to copy their older siblings. Small cups with a 1 qt or less bucket can keep them busy scooping & pouring as long as you refill the water a few times. Don't expect them to actually water anything. -Oh, & let them have an area of the garden to do what they wish. They may or may not want to grow what you intended for that space. They may just want to have the dirt to dig in or bury a rock or something even though that's not what you want to happen. Give them a choice between a few seeds to plant as well as a transplant, so they don't lose patience waiting for sprouting. Help them know where to walk as well because they might step on what was sown. Mulch may help mark the outside of the planting area. Let them decorate popsicle sticks are markers or on paper tags you slip into sealed baggies to bury partway in soil. -Sometimes a container garden placed near the other garden plants is all they need to be satisfied with having their own space. -For perennial vegetables & fruits it's nice to include them in the shopping, planting, labeling, & upkeep over the years especially if you let it be theirs. Use their name along with the plant and compliment them on the crop even if you're doing most of the work to make it successful. Our married daughter now has a strawberry patch at their home from plants she selected at 10 years old along with a bunch of other kitchen garden perennials. During her teen years she had lost interest in gardening, but now that she has her own "bit of earth" is hooked on gardening again drawing on childhood experiences in the garden with me & her grandfather. -They remember the little bits of gardening information you talk about while in the garden & will repeat it back to you or you'll hear them telling someone else about what you did together. They soon become the experts... Also if you use a bit of child-like imagination to call things it makes it more interesting to them. Spreading used coffee grounds is feeding the worms breakfast or smoothies. Looking for ripe tomatoes is hunting for jewels. Looking for zucchini big enough to grill slices for dinner can be hunting for man zucchini or burger zucchini. If you know you have a whopper cucumber or zucchini in there ask them to find the giant hiding in the garden & say you'll keep watch to make sure it's safe to pick... Then go help them because they're scratchy. Things like that help them have fun while working with you. It's good for me to keep in mind not to work my teen son too hard though he is a great laborer especially with structures, compost, hauling organic matter, etc, and enjoys taking photos of plants & insects in the garden, but has no interest in playing in it now. He respects the garden spaces I've taken over for plants and comes to tell me he's damaged something while mowing or playing ball with friends. He is also good with any younger visitors like cousins helping them be careful around my flowering plants or telling them what's okay to pick or not based on what I've told him in the past. Can you tell I'm enthusiastic about kids in the garden? Enjoy the garden with them most of all & pass it on to the next generation. Corrine

We've done stepping stones. We also have a Poetry Stones kit from http://www.magneticpoetry.com which is plenty of fun. Here's the first haiku we did for my mom's Japanese garden (my mom is a musician)... floral melody quavers over a ground bass ... summer symphony Something we did last year which was really fun was to create small sunprinted banners similar to Tibetan prayer flags. We used Setacolor Soleil paints which we ordered in bulk from DharmaTrading, but you can get small quantities of the same paints in a Klutz book kit called "Sun Paint" (see http://klutz.com/catalog/product.php?itemNo=2880&cat=search). Basically you paint swirls of colours on a bandana-sized square of cotton, arrange leaves, flowers, tools or other garden-related objects on top and leave it to dry in the bright sunshine. You end up with beautiful negative images of the objects printed over lovely colours. We hung ours in a row on a string between fence posts and they looked just beautiful flapping in the breeze. They probably helped keep the birds off the strawberries too. This spring we had fun weaving a trellis with apple-tree prunings. I nailed together four big straight branches into a rectangle with legs. We banged the legs deep into the soil and that kept the rectangle square enough to work with. Then we wove the long thin apple-tree canes over-under-over-under within the rectangle. It looks really nice. I'm sure that it will rot away by next year or the year after, but that's part of the garden life-cycle, isn't it? Another idea I'm keeping in the back of my mind... using discarded CD's to create wind mobiles to deter birds from the fruit trees. Miranda

Have you seen the "mice" cookies made out of stemmed maraschino cherries dipped in chocolate with Hershey Kiss heads resting on half of an oreo cookie? They are soooo cute and everybody who sees them, raves about them. You take the top off of an Oreo cooke and save the white frosted part to use as the base. Dip a stemmed cherry in melted chocolate and lay on the white frosting with the stem facing backward like the tail of the mouse. Place a dab of chocolate on the base of the Hershey Kiss. Use 2 sliced almonds pressed into the chocolate as ears and press against the cherry. The base of the kiss goes against the cherry with the almonds in between as the ears. Use green frosting gel and place 2 dots on the Kiss as eyes. Place a red hot or cinnamon candy on the center of the white frosting by one side of the mouse and pipe green gel leaves on either side of the red hot. It is just a green squiggle on either side, but it gives the effect of holly. You could also use a dot of red piping gel on the tip of the Kiss as a nose, but it isn't really necessary. When done, the mouse faces sideways with the holly in front! They take some time, but aren't that expensive as the cherries usually come in a jar with a large number of cherries, and probably 3 bags of Oreos would give 100 bases. I always get people raving over them when I make them for my Christmas Open House. TTFN, Candy

The book "Ultimate Book of Kids Concoctions" (there are several issues) is a fantastic place to look for fun crafts and activities that use normal, household stuff. There are recipes for paint, clay, all kinds of crafts, etc. The sponge balls are fun to make (you cut sponges into strips, then attach together with electrical ties) and fun to play with. I let the kids make them, and give them assorted uses--if you leave the electrical tie long, they make great glass cleaners (I teach a children's cooking class). Or you can cut the ties off, so you have a fun ball to play with. We use them instead of water balloons for that game where you pair off, standing in 2 lines, and toss your balloon (or wet sponge ) back and forth, stepping back a step until you drop your balloon or sponge. Or how about making chocolate clay with them? You can google for the recipe. Fun to make, then they can play with it, modeling animals or whatever, and afterwards, eat it (it tastes a little like Tootsie Roll to me). You can make beads from magazine pages. The more colorful, the better. Cut long triangles--about an inch or 2 wide at the short side, and 4-5-6" long to the point. Put the most colorful side down, roll the strip up on a round toothpick, glueing the point. Let dry and string, alternating with purchased beads, if desired, on plastic laces. You can also color pasta--put a tablespoon or 2 of water in a plastic jar, add a few drops of food coloring. Add pasta with holes in the middle (elbows, etc), and shake the jar until evenly colored. Spread out on a cookie sheet to dry. String on plastic laces. A tip for stringing beads/pasta--TAPE one end of the lace to the desk, or tie one bead or piece of pasta on the string. Makes it easier to string without losing the beads/pasta, etc. If you read the book Strega Nona to them, you could have the students draw a picture of the town, then hand out white yarn for them go glue on to represent the run-away pasta. I've taught some 5 year olds (and many older kids to do straw weaving. It's fun and all you need is soda straws and scraps of yarn. Little too complicated to explain in a few sentences, but if you google "Straw weaving', you'll find directions. Have fun!