by One thing we love to do as a family is have a garden. We have a vegetable garden in the backyard and the twins love to help with anything in the garden. It’s important that you teach your kids when they’re very young about the importance of working and the importance of contributing to the family. We find that helping to take care of the garden teaches many great life lessons.
Involving Both Twins At The Same Time
Sometimes when you are working in the garden, you’re doing a task that is very specific to a single person. Perhaps you’re digging one hole, or you’re pulling one plant, or you’re planting one seed, or harvesting one thing; and so one thing you need to think about is how can you involve both of your twins at the same time.
Taking Turns
If your twins are toddlers or older they should be able to help with chores in the backyard. We like to have our girls take turns with things like planting seeds. Maybe one of them will plant seeds down one row, and the other girl will plant the other row, or they’ll alternate seeds with each planting.
Teaching Moments
Make sure you don’t just give assignments. Teach them how to do something. For example, if we need our girls to harvest strawberries, we show them the type of strawberries that are ready to harvest, and then we let them loose and let them harvest. Now keep in mind as you give little assignments to your twins they are going to make mistakes, and that is OK. That is part of the learning process.
Ownership
This spring we planted several pots of flowers, and we had each of our kids pick a different flower to plant. They looked at pictures on the seed package envelopes and picked which flower they liked the most.
It was fun to see the distinct flower types that each of our twin girls wanted to plant and how they planted those seeds and took care of them. One daughter nurtured her flowers more than the other, and when the flowers grew, it was obvious which ones had been cared for.
The garden is a great place to involve your twins and teach them the value of work. So roll up your sleeves and have fun!
