| Written By Lara Wadsworth |
Getting kids involved in gardening and food production is a wonderful way to create lasting bonds and educate them about food and nutrition. Microgreens are a super-easy way to do this! You can grow them right in your home and they are ready to eat within 1-2 weeks! Microgreens are tiny edible seedlings harvested just a week or two after germination. Their colorful leaves, interesting textures, fast growth, and surprising flavors offer plenty of sensory fun for kids. I’ve brainstormed a few ways to involve kids with microgreens to make your job as easy as possible!
I highly recommend True Leaf Market’s microgreens kits. In particular, I have used their Self-Watering Microgreens Kit, and it is hard to mess up! At an affordable price, you can get everything you need to grow at least four crops of microgreens! This includes the trays, microgreen seeds, growing medium, sprayer, and instructions. These kits make wonderful gifts for people (and kiddos) in your life who are interested in microgreens. If you don't want to use a self-watering tray, nestle a tray with holes inside one without holes and add your growing medium. Coco coir is recommended for beginners as it can be used for all microgreen seeds.
Once you have chosen which microgreens you want to try to grow (I have some suggestions below!), I recommend reading the product page on True Leaf Market’s website. This will have all the information you will need to be successful. Microgreens are very easy to grow, but some of them have one or two things that need to happen first, like soaking or covering. Get this right and you will succeed easily!
Radish Microgreens are some of the fastest-growing microgreens! They go from seed to sprout in under one week. This means that kids can start to see progress in less than 48 hours. Experience the joy of your children waking up in the morning, running to check the growth of their microgreen trays, and squealing with joy as they see they have grown overnight!
Pea Shoots are sweet and crunchy. While other varieties have a peppery or spicy flavor that might not vibe with your kids, pea shoots are sure to be a win! They taste like a fresh sugar snap pea, delicious! PEA shoots also grow a bit taller, so they are fun for kids to watch and harvest. Ready in 10-14 days, don’t forget to pre-soak and cover them!
Red Cabbage Microgreens sprout into deep purple little cotyledons. Do you have a little girl who can’t get enough of pink and purple things? This might be the microgreen to try! Especially in contrast to other green microgreens, these look unique and stunning. Another honorable mention for this category is Swiss Chard. Swiss Chard Microgreens have classic green leaves, but their stems take on a vibrant color! Red, Yellow, White, and Rainbow are available; it is so fun to watch them grow!
Sunflower Microgreens are so fun to grow because the leaves themselves get quite large. Ready to harvest in less than two weeks, you can literally watch these guys grow and get bigger! They also have a delicious, mild flavor that may be easier to eat than some other options. With big, sturdy stems and a nutty flavor, they are perfect for little hands. Don’t forget to pre-soak and cover!
For this project, choose something that kids can decorate. Luckily, microgreens can grow in almost anything! Just be sure it has some drainage. This can be as simple as poking a hole into the bottom of a paper cup before letting your kids color them with markers, or as in depth as terracotta pots with paint! Whatever you choose, your kids will love seeing their art displayed on the windowsill and watching their microgreens sprout, all thanks to the love they put into their vessel.
Using trays like those included in the microgreens kit, or larger ones like heavy-duty 1020s, sprinkle the chosen seeds into a pattern. You can use a stencil or just your hands to spell out names, create shapes, or write initials. Let the kids do their own! Then, as the seeds sprout, the kids will see the shapes start to form! Within a week, they will see their name, initials, or another shape turn into a fluffy, green (or other color!) paradise. Then, they can taste the delicious greens and joke about eating whatever shape you made. So fun!
Let the kids play scientists. Bonus points if you have pretend lab coats and goggles! Each day the microgreens are growing, let the kids don the gear, grab their clipboard, and take notes on what they see. Make observations on color, side, speed, shape, and more. You can even grow multiple trays at once and note the differences. What happens if you soak the seeds beforehand? What happens if you don’t mist them? Let the kids experiment and find out!
A fun way to show the kids the magic of growing is to document each step! Plant the seeds and then, 1-2 times a day until harvest, let the kids take a picture of the tray from the same angle. Then, you can put them all together at the end and watch them grow! Swipe through the pictures quickly or put them together in a video editing app to turn them into a video. Combine this activity with one of the others for a double whammy.
Once you have grown your chosen microgreens, pretend like you're opening a gourmet restaurant! You can decide who plays what, but the kids will love pretending to be a food critic, chef, waiter, or other role. Whatever you serve, use the microgreens and let those be the focus. Use fancy accents, dress-up clothes, classical music, and more to set the scene. Make trying this new food a fun, stress-free experience.
These colorful mini wraps are great for little hands and taste buds. Let kids build their own!
1. Spread cream cheese or hummus across each wrap.
2. Layer with veggies, microgreens, and any extras
3. Roll it up, slice into pinwheels or leave whole, and enjoy!
Letting kids pick and layer their own ingredients encourages creativity and boosts interest in eating what they grew.
Microgreens grow quickly enough to keep kids engaged and feature enough variety to have an almost endless source of experimentation and fun. The required supplies are minimal: just a tray, coco coir or paper towels, water, and a sunny windowsill or grow light. These delightful little seedlings are a great way to introduce kids to science, gardening, food production, healthy eating, and responsibility. Plus, because you harvest them so young, there’s less chance of disappointment with no long waits or big failures. Kids get the thrill of success and a tasty reward at the end! The cherry on top is that you can do these activities indoors year-round in any climate! If you’ve ever wondered how you can expose your kids to gardening and plant science without having a garden, this is your answer!
Happy growing!
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