Gardening For Kids And How It Relates To Math

With the days getting warmer, you may be thinking of planting vegetables and flower gardens. This summer, get the kids involved with gardening and along the way, recognize that it will teach them nurturing skills and patience, but also sharpen their math skills.

Have them use algebra formulas to compute how much fertilizer they will need per quart or liter of water. Or, calculate the germination rate of potted seeds – the number of seedlings divided by the number of seeds planted – multiplied by 100.

Using basic mathematical functions like comparisons and measurements, kids can translate the gardening data (how fast the beans grow up the trellis) into charts, graphs and reports.

From this hands-on experience, they'll realize how useful their math skills can be outside of the classroom and perhaps a new-found respect for this subject will begin to bloom!

Content provided by Oakland University.