Teaching Students How to Grow in a Digital Environment

Written by: Alessia Carpino

During these unprecedented times, students are learning from home in a digital environment. With everything going on in the world, why not add some extra educational fun for everyone in your class or home!

Whether you are a teacher, parent or kid that wants to be engaged in virtual gardening fun, you’ll definitely like this great activity for everyone to enjoy. Read all the sections below before you start and have fun! Remember, just “grow with the flow”!

Virtual Indoor Gardening – Growing Strawberries:

First, buy ready-to-plant strawberry seeds and get your growing container or cup ready for planting. Add your potting soil to the container and moisten it with filtered water. Make sure you added enough water for the soil to clump together, but not too much to turn it into mud.

Follow the instructions on the seed packet closely when growing your strawberry seeds indoors. Don’t plant the seeds any deeper than recommended. You could simply place the strawberry seeds right on top of the soil and gently add a bit of extra soil to the seeded surface. Next, lightly water your planted seeds.

After that, place your container in a spot that gets a minimum of 6 hours of sunlight or 12 hours of artificial light per day. If the soil becomes dry, water the seeds every 2-3 days. Watering regularly is very important for the seeds! When your strawberry plants are grown, continue to water the plant, but make sure it isn’t sitting around in water-lodged soil. Once the berries are a bright red colour, they are ready to harvest, and you can finally enjoy the nice and healthy snack you earned from your fun indoor gardening experience!

Virtual Indoor Gardening – Activity Sheet:

Complete the activity sheet after you finish gardening. Enjoy doing fun activities and record your experience on this sheet. You can either print it out or edit it using a PDF editor of your choice.

WRSFG-Teaching Students How to Grow in a Digital Environment Blog Post-Activity Sheet

Virtual Indoor Gardening – Collage:

Throughout your gardening experience, take pictures and create a cool collage with your family or for a school assignment to express your creativity and have a nice memory. Make great collages using tools such as PicCollage, Canva, etc.

Virtual Indoor Gardening – Benefits of Indoor Gardening & Growing in a Digital Environment:

There are multiple positive impacts of indoor gardening that will help to improve your mood. Indoor gardening can reduce your levels of depression and anxiety, decrease stress and create a more calming environment for your work-at-home lifestyle. Growing in a digital environment also improves mental health by allowing people to try something positive and new with their loved ones or class while giving life to their own plants.