Kinfolk - Herbalism for Kids - 7 Activities and 10 Resources

    What should your child do when he/she is stung by stinging nettle? What about a bee? 

    What flowers in the garden are edible and which are poisonous?

    Teaching children about plants on the homestead is a must. It's not enough to show them how to start seeds or weed between rows of carrots. There is so much growing on the land already that people have used as foods and medicines for millennia. Wild plant environments are the homesteading child's playground. They need to know, when they make their fairy castles and pirate lairs in the forest edges, which plants can be brewed into tea and which are to be left unbothered.

    Safety and health - two excellent reasons to teach children about common beneficial plants right outside the door.

    There are many playful and artistic resources that help teach children about beneficial plants. But you don't have to buy a game or book for them. You are your child's first teacher. They can learn about edible and medicinal plants right alongside you as your child learns. Or you can teach them what you know using the methods outlined here.

ACTIVITIES -

1. The calendar of the yard (or your garden or foraging area): Make or buy a wall calendar of the months. Track what plants are growing, which are blooming, which are producing seeds, and when their tops have died back (useful if harvesting some roots). This can be begun any time of year, but after a year, you and your child will have a map for foraging or growing useful edible, native, and medicinal plants. Don't forget to look up! Note the cycle of production of fruit, nut, and seed trees.
   
2. Make a few simple medicinal preparations together during the year. Plantain salve for mosquito bites and other itches. Comfrey salve for skin irritations and healing. Brew up some spruce tips for an end of winter Vitamin C hit or some white pine needle tea for a cold. Dry some nettle or mint for tea. Tincture some motherwort or echinacea angustifolia.
3. Make flashcards of useful plants. Get some blank index cards and take and print photos to glue on or let your child draw the plant capturing the leaf style and flower. Label them and write their characteristics on the back of the card: botanical name, common name, uses, lore. This can also be done in a sketch book.
   
4. Help your child grow an herb garden of both culinary herbs and medicinal plants. Grow mint, chamomile, basil, lemon balm, calendula, sage, and lavender. Pot comfrey and dandelion. Start a nettle patch and a blackberry bramble. Teach your child how to pinch back growth for a lush plant that will produce longer before bolting to seed. Once the plant has gone to seed, help her/him collect seeds for next year.
5. Learn how to forage for both food and medicine. Dandelion flowers to fritter and roots to be tinctured. Elderberries for syrup. Blackberries for jam and leaves for tea. Stinging nettle for infusions, pestos, and soup. Comfrey for salves and plant fertilizer. There are countless plant allies right in your own neighborhood.
6. Celebrate and incorporate herbs, flowers, and plants in other ways beyond food and medicine. Weave baskets or make wreaths with grapevine. Create stunning wildflower arrangements for the house. Press flowers to use in crafts. Bring mistletoe and evergreens into the home for the winter holidays. Use plants to dye wool or Easter eggs. (More posts will be coming with many artistic projects using plants.)  
7. Include herbal studies within your homeschool curriculum. Lessons can be included over the years in areas of science, math, art, reading and writing, cooking.
   

    There are also plenty of free and purchasable resources available. Pinterest is a fantastic resource for learning, foraging, and craft ideas. There are games, books, coloring books, botanical and flash cards, online groups and curricula, and magazines geared towards children's herbal learning.

GAMES - 

Wildcraft! is a board game available at A Child's Dream Come True. It's a cooperative game made in the U.S. The goal is to work together to collect berries and herbs Grandmother needs to bake a pie. But there are obstacles along the way and everyone has to be back home before nightfall.

Walk in the Woods is another cooperative game made by Pastimes, a long time cooperative games family business. Players meet edible and not-so-friendly plants and fruit along the way from berries and dandelions to poison ivy and stinging nettles. The goal is to fill the basket with goodies and remedies from nature.

BOOKS - 

A Kids Herb Book by Lesley Tierra, herbalist and mother. The book is substantial and packed with fun facts, herbal bedtime stories, coloring pages, how-to-make pages, and plant mythology. 

Foraging with Kids by Adele Nozaday takes kids right outside to identify and cook up delicious foraged wild foods.

Honeysuckle Sipping: The Plant Lore of Childhood by Jeanne R. Chesanow is a classic book, less about medicine and more about the lore and magic of plants from a child's view. The book is a collection of stories of plant lore and children's games revolving around plants. Think daisy chains and making wishes on dandelions, but more, so much more than that.

Green Heart Herbals has written three children's books in a series about medicinal benefits of plantain, yarrow, and dandelion. Each one sets up a situation in which a child meets with a problem such as a bee sting (plantain) or a bleeding scrape (yarrow) and teaches how to use plant medicine to help.

CARDS -

 

There are several beautiful sets of cards that help with identification and plant knowledge. Herbs and Medicinal Plant Knowledge Cards by Pomegranate are a pack of 48 illustrated botanical cards. 

Herbs for Kids is a very comprehensive set of learning cards that can be added to a homeschool curriculum. It's a digital download with 75 printable pages of learning and 40 flashcards to be printed. Te curriculum contains lessons in botany as well as medicinal actions of plants.

MAGAZINES -

Herbal Roots Ezines are available for download all the way back to 2009. Each issue focuses on a specific plant and is geared towards children. The site also has free downloadable resources such as an herbal bingo game.

CLUBS - 

Herb Fairies is a comprehensive children's learning subscription that includes 13 books for the year and includes access to online learning and social media groups. Herbal Roots Ezine is included in this subscription.

    With so many resources to teach us about the abundance of nature, there's no excuse not to dive right in this spring and add one or two activities to begin your child's wild plant and herbalism education. Children are as elemental as the earth itself and love to bridge the natural with the magical. 

    As herbalist Rosemary Gladstar says: "We must take our children into the wild, introduce them to the plants, and teach them of their connection to the earth. In instilling in our children a respect for plant medicine, we not only care for their tender bodies but help pass along the seeds of a tradition that is as old as human life itself.”