Growing a bond: Parker County FRC starts up Summer Learning Garden for parents, children

After story time and a brief lesson on plants, several young children finally had time get their hands on some dirt.

Last week, the children and their parents marched out of the Parker County Family Resource Center in Springtown and proceeded to till soil with little shovels in the learning garden set up for them. Then the adults planted marigolds on opposite sides of the garden, and the kids helped water the new plants.

This gardening project is part of the center’s Summer Learning Garden group that takes place from 9:30-10:30 a.m. on Tuesdays. The class on May 31 was the first in the series, and the program will run through Aug. 2.

Early intervention specialist Mieke Brock led the children through a series of activities during the program on May 31. Brock showed the kids the marigolds they would be planting and allowed the kids to sniff the flowers to find the fragrance. She talked to the kids about what a plant needs to grow, the parts of a plant – the flower, the stems, the roots, the leaves – and read to them the picture book “If You Plant a Seed” by Kadir Nelson. 

Afterward, some of the parents said they liked bringing their kids to the class. Tracy Dial found out about the learning garden program at the library and decided to bring her 3-year-old Knox Ford to the group.

“He enjoys being outside, and we have a garden at home,” Dial said.

The FRC opened in late March near the Springtown ISD administration building. Since starting up the programs for families with kids ages 0-6, Brock said last week that the gardening group on May 31 was the biggest group they had so far at the FRC building.

The gardening group got started when Cook Children's Healthy Children Coalition for Parker County donated the materials for the learning garden. Brock is also using plant-related books from the library to read to the kids during the class.

During the class while Brock relayed basic plant information, Brock told the parents that kids learn even when it doesn’t seem like they are. Teaching kids about gardening and plants opens the door to helping kids grow developmentally, Brock said.

“Children are just like sponges developmentally,” she said. “It hits on all the developmental groups. It hits on the cognitive skills. It hits on gross and fine motor skills because they’re moving and jumping and digging and planting. It helps with back-and-forth communication. It helps with sharing, team playing.”

The class can also raise parents’ expectations of activities they can do with their children, Brock said.

“I also want parents to know that they can do things that they think they can’t with their children. Like cooking with their kids in a safe manner, planting a garden,” she said. “A lot of parents when (their kids are) little, (say), ‘I can’t do it. They won’t do it. They take so much of my attention.’ And this is a way of saying, hey, look, you can do this with your children.”

The learning garden program isn’t the only developmental group that the FRC has to offer. Other free developmental groups offered are Healthy Eating, Healthy Reading on Thursdays throughout June and Baby 101 in July and August. For more information about these programs and to register for them, visit the FRC’s Eventbrite page at https://www.eventbrite.com/o/family-resource-center-47191513283.  

All the groups, not just the gardening one, aim to encourage the bond between parents and their children by making parents active participants, Brock said.

“When the parents come to the groups, I don’t want them sitting to the side. I want them interacting, hand over hand or hand under hand, talking back and forth to the kids, letting them and working with them,” she said. “I want to encourage that bond.”

Photos by Madelyn Edwards