Gardening – Jam packed Learning (part I)

When it comes to learning about plants, nothing like a vegetable garden. Most of the children truly enjoy digging and messing around in the mud. My children were in ecstasies when their first plant sprouted. I have just collected a few benefits of gardening below, just as a reminder, because i know in the busy and sometimes hectic schedules we often find no energy to spend digging and watering, but shake the dust off those gardening tools (or rather leave the shaking off) and start doing it, you will enjoy!

1. Observing Allaah swt’s qudraah at first hand:

This is no doubt the biggest benefit of all. Kids learn like no other thing can teach them, the miracle of life, and the greatness of the Creator who has fashioned the universe. Quraan invites us in different suras to ponder over the mergence of life from fragile seeds.

A second message that we get from actually planting our own seeds and eating their fruit is to realize the abundance granted to us by Allaah. We planted one single seed and get uncountable produce. Try and let children ponder over how we consume uncountable bounties of Allaah, yet when it comes to thanking Him, we count our nawaafil, our adhkaar, our fasts. We remember the amount of charity we give, yet we never remember the number of grains we ate or the number of litres of water we consume!

When the kids see for themselves the yields of that single seed they planted, it will instil in them the quality of tashakkur, inshAllaah.

Here is the picture of one bean seed:

and this is just some of what we got from a single plant. SubhanAllah!

 

2. Understanding Quraan:

Allaah swt invites us many a time in Quraan to ponder over vegetations, and to see His qudraah in the sprouting of a shoot, making of giant trees out of small and fragile looking seeds etc. While children are looking at the different stages of plants life they can have a better understand of those ayaahs of Quraan. eg

“Now man should see his food, We poured down the water falling from above.” Sura 80, verse 24-25

“Then We split the earth splitting.”sura 80, verse 26

“Then We made the grains to grow therein,” sura 80, verse 27

“And vines and esculent vegetables,” sura 80, verse 28

This is the journey of the same seed, we took pics at different times. Similarly i planted a few twigs of mint in my backyard and this is what i have after few months:

 

 

Fatabaa rakAllahu ahsanul khaliqeen.