Today I thought we’d take a little field trip to Home Depot. My husband and kids sent me a very thoughtful and beautiful flower arrangement, for Mother’s Day, of hydrangeas. I loved this idea because my husband really put thought into something that was not only beautiful, but that I could plant and keep forever (or as long as I can before I kill it.)
We needed to go find a pot big enough for it to have room to grow though, so we headed to Home Depot. My kids LOVE Home Depot because they have car carts there and there’s a steering wheel on both sides…one for each of them. They also LOVE Home Depot because they have…..cacti! Yes, they love to get little cactuses (thought I’d try out both plural versions and see which one sounded better) because it’s a desert plant that they can put in their sandbox and play desert. We’d gotten each of them a cactus before and it didn’t end well. They dragged them around the house for a couple of days, spilling them until there was barely any dirt left, and finally they just needed to be thrown out. But today I thought “Ok, we’ll actually plant these, quickly, and hope that they make it. Of course, they weren’t down with this plan, but once I found one of the cacti on the new couch…we decided that learning to take care of plants would be today’s activity!
We got everything ready and went up to the upstairs porch so that the dogs wouldn’t bother us. We quickly planted our plants, with very little resistance, and then went downstairs to get 
the rest of the plants we’d gotten at Home Depot (the initial one we went there for and the 3 others we ended up walking out with). When we went back up to the porch, we discovered that the Miniature Schnauzer puppy had gotten locked out there, with the plants, and eaten 2 of the mini aloe plants I’d gotten to keep the cacti company! So after yelling at the dog, we continued with our project. The boys had a lot of fun filling, and refilling, the watering can and watering all the plants. They even took turns, willingly, a few times! And now we have a project that we can take care of while we learn about what plants need to survive.
Try getting your child a little plant to care for…beginning to learn responsibility and caring…and have fun doing something together!