Composting for Kids

Making compost is fun and educational too!

Composting for kids is a great way to start off the gardening season with your Composting for kids family or local school. Making compost can teach your kids a lot about the natural cycles of life. Composting is a great hands on activity that shows kids how grasses, leaves, manure and kitchen scraps are transformed into rich fertilizer.
Kitchen scraps go in and rich soil comes out...

Mary likes to help me make compost and is always amazed when we mix together a bunch of yucky kitchen scraps, some dry grasses and cow poop a little water and air and out comes great garden soil. Then low and behold it
grows little seedlings and pretty soon were eating salads..... Like magic composting . Children can be a big help collecting materials to start your compost pile such as leaves, grass clippings, and weeds. They can add kitchen compost from your compost pail.

Composting for kids is fun and when they get involved in collecting, building and turning their compost piles they are proud of their work.
composting instructions When your kids eat the vegetables that grow from their compost and pick the flowers it nourishes they can see the value of their labors and what we gardeners call "gardeners gold". Compost is the foundation of organic home gardening.

Composting takes place in all natural environments all the time. It is the process where leaves and other plant materials fall to the ground and are slowly decomposed by soil organism including earthworms.

It can be fun and exciting to dig into a pile and come out with a handful of squiggling earthworms which can make the best compost available red wigglers earthworms . They call composting with earthworms vermiculture. Compost made by earthworms is called earthworm castings.

You can make compost using hot piles, or cool piles, or you can even just put your manure, grass clippings and garden refuse on your beds and let them decompose which is called sheet composting. My victory garden ebook has directions for all kinds of composting.

Compost bins can easily be made from readily available materials and are a great family project. Here are some free plans for home made compost bins. If you don't have the time or inclination to make your own compost bin or compost tumbler you can purchase one from my Amazon online garden supply store.

Composting for kids provides a platform for teaching biology, chemistry, and physics in a fun and exciting way. In essence, it is an educational tool through which children can learn about moisture, aeration, carbon to nitrogen ration, and how to achieve the proper temperature for both hot and cold composting. They also become familiar with the layering of brown and green materials, what can or cannot be added, and the many uses of the resulting compost.
Here are some composting instructions for making a hot compost pile.

An organic composting program can even be implemented at your children's school. Not only would it be a beneficial addition to both science and recycling programs, but it would also be a great way to involve the entire school body including staff, students, food services workers, custodians, and parents. It could increase community awareness and the compost could be used to start a school garden or traded with local farmers to supplement the school lunches.

Composting for kids is a great family, school, compost piles and community activity that we can all be part of.