If you are a keen gardener it's very enjoyable to see your children having fun with gardening too and teaching them about compost can certainly be a fun thing to do but before you start you have to realize that teaching adult and teaching kinds are two ends of the scale and require very different techniques to really work. For one thing kids have short attention spans so you have to bare this in mind.
It's definitely a good thing for kids to learn about the environment and how we should take care of it more because they are our future and if they are taught properly the advantages or organic over synthetic copies of products this can only help to bring about a brighter future. It also helps to make adults more aware themselves when their own children hold an interest in it.
If you intend to teach to a wider audience of kids perhaps in your local area you are going to need to set up the room where you intend to hold the lesson. If you are short of visual aids you can look in your local area for a gardening company that might be willing to lend you some material. I personally went online and just looked up gardener St Albans for a local gardening company in my area and I paid to have some fencing put up. As I was now a good customer I took the liberty of asking them if they had any material I could use for my lesson and so happens that they did. I got a 15 minute video short which explained the benefits of using compost which I then used in the talk. You could actually do the same thing by looking up landscaper Hemel or some other location as landscapers often have the full wares to so most garden work.
I was lucky in that instance but you don't have to go to those lengths if you don't plan to use a gardening company any time soon but that isn't a problem because you can find everything you need online with images and video sites galore.
Visual aids are a must when you're teaching kids because you need to keep their attention and pictures certainly help. If you have a few pictures you can create a powerpoint slide presentation which they should enjoy and it will help them to see what you are talking about.
Having said that, nothing works better than a full blown demonstration which kids love because they get to be involved in the process and it makes the lesson a really fun activity. Children are always very keen on asking questions which is good because you can answer them as you continue with the demonstration and in some cases show them the answer visually. When kids are also having fun they are more apt to ask related questions and get really involved which is all good for the learning process.
Don't forget though that you are teaching a type of gardening to children and as such you have to work extra hard to keep their attention. It's a good idea to have someone helping you maintain order in the classroom when you are not used to teaching children as there is an art to it that comes mainly with practice which is what I found out.
Depending on the age group you are teaching you will have to change your presentation accordingly. For very young children you must make it simple and relate what you are saying to things they will understand. You can go a little more in depth if they are older but with all age groups it is a great idea to drum into them the benefits of composting right at the start of the lesson and explain to them what exciting things will be happening. This will peak their interest and from there on in it should be child's play.
