Mark Gregory Turansky

Victory Gardens were a popular and patriotic way to aid the war effort during World War II.  Millions of families across the country planted gardens to alleviate pressure on the domestic food supply during the war.  Victory Gardens also boosted public morale because everyone felt civic pride through their contributions.  In today’s difficult times, planting a garden makes more sense than ever.  In the spirit of public service, we should consider them Victory Gardens, just like the ones our grandfathers and grandmothers had.

Here are five good reasons we should all grow Victory Gardens.

1.  SAVE MONEY!

Fresh vegetables from the grocery store can be expensive.  Growing your own vegetables is inexpensive!  Seeds are cheap.  Water is cheap.  Time and sunshine are free.

Enjoy a continuous harvest by staggering plantings of various veggies with different maturation rates.  You  are guaranteed that something will be available for consumption every day during the growing season.

2.  100% ORGANIC

Your home-grown, fresh vegetables are chemical-free.  Do you really want your children consuming pesticides and poisons designed to kill organisms?  Growing your own vegetables is 100% organic.

There is a trend afoot for organic farms and gardening that’s bigger than your backyard.  Organic farms are being built into developments and subdivisions as an amenity, giving the local community access to fresh, healthy, and chemical-free produce.

3.  REDUCE WASTE

According to the EPA, 24% of our landfill waste is comprised of lawn clippings, leaves, and organic scraps from the kitchen.  In other words, perfect compost materials account for a quarter of our garbage!  This is a waste of our tax payer money.  Fiscal conservatives and environmentalists alike can agree to save money, space, and resources by composting.

Making compost is easy and it’s great for your soil.  It makes your garden vibrant and healthy, and the legacy you leave long after you move from that house is revitalized and regenerated soil.  This is a Very Good Thing for our communities.

4.  GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Your fresh vegetables have a small or even negative carbon footprint. There is no truck carrying your produce across the country for consumption, so there is no pollution from your veggies.  And considering that all green plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, your garden is cleaning the air.

5.  IT’S FUN AND REWARDING

My daughter loves picking snowpeas with me when I get home from work.  She loves playing in the dirt and planting seeds.  It’s a great way to bond, but it’s also a valuable learning experience.  She is seeing the results of her work while learning when and how to plant various crops.  I know she’ll have great memories of working the garden with Daddy.

More than bonding with my girls (the baby just likes playing in the dirt, but she’ll learn), gardening is also rewarding for me.  I enjoy watching it come alive and grow.  It’s a great reason to spend time outside enjoying the sunshine.  It’s fun to get dirty while getting some exercise. I also know I’m doing a good thing for my family, my community, and our environment.

I encourage everyone to grow a Victory Garden during this recession.  Let’s show future generations that we’ve learned something from The Greatest Generation.  We’ll all be better off, and so will our communities and environment.

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To any parents using this brand of outlet cover:  They suck.  Safety 1st apparently does not test their products with real babies, because my nine month old bested their plug protector with ease.  Turns out, she’s not gifted or special.  There is another video on YouTube of a baby crawling across the floor and easily pulling this plug from the outlet.

Do not buy plug protector / outlet covers from Safety 1st.  Needless to say, we are replacing ours. Now here is the entertaining video:

And here is the other baby I mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OXe-uQZA-E&NR=1

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Sesame Street is 40 years old and struggling (ratings-wise) against Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants.  What little bit of Spanish Dora teaches my little daughter is not the same as the impact Sesame Street has had on the world.

Newsweek has a retrospective new article that talks about the importance of Sesame Street.  I can corroborate the facts stated in the article:

“Before Sesame Street, kindergartens taught very little,” says [Joan Ganz Cooney, Sesame Street co-founder and TV producer], “and suddenly masses of children were coming in knowing letters and numbers.” Independent research found that children who regularly watch Sesame Street gained more than nonviewers on tests of letter and number recognition, vocabulary and early math skills.

My daughter isn’t 4 yet, but she’s reading her bedtime books to us now. She turns 4 next month, and for this past month she’s taken over all nighttime reading. I simply help with the hard words and encourage her to sound out the rest.

We’re doing math now, too.  We incorporate fun little games into daily activities that demonstrate addition and subtraction.  For example, we’ll ask her how many strawberries she’ll have left in her bowl if she eats 3 of them.  She gets it.  She understands addition and subtraction.  It’s time to start with multiplication and division.  Maybe I’ll show her how to separate her blocks into groups of 3 and ask her how many groups she has.  It doesn’t matter how I introduce the concepts, so long as it’s fun.

Maria Montessori was right in her approach to learning and her new pedagogical style, but researchers today find there is almost no age requirement to early education.  Maria Montessori originally developed her curriculum for young children aged 3-6, but there are now programs for younger children, too.

My daughter learned sign language as a baby.  The benefits are amazing.  Toddlers can communicate with us long before they can speak.  Knowing their needs are being heard gives them confidence and makes for an easier child.  My daughter once signed “cold” to me in a gas station parking lot during a road trip.  She was only old enough to say a couple of words (”dada”, “mama”, “dog”, and “duck” come to mind), but she knew dozens of signs and this was the first time she used “cold” on her own.  I was stoked! She very clearly communicated her need to me. She wanted to be back in the car!

I read that 18 month old toddlers can only speak 8-10 words but can know up to 75 signs.  We counted my daughter’s vocabulary and the math was spot on.  She knew 8 words and 65 signs, many of which were genuinely useful (others were just fun):  up/down, hot/cold, hungry, sleepy, more, milk, apple, diaper, dog, cat, and many more.

Kids are natural sponges.  They want to learn.  They just need the right environment and encouragement.

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