We know about how houseplants help improve a home’s air quality, which in and of itself is great for the whole family, especially those members with smaller lungs. But you may wonder which are safe houseplants to have around your kids. Plus, plants can serve as more than an air filter. By choosing the right ones, you can turn these air cleaning powerhouses into simultaneously providing a fun and educational activity that can last for years. Let’s take a look at a few plants that are perfect for kids.
Five Great Houseplants for Kids
- Snake Plant: This is always one of our favorites for air filtration properties, because unlike most plants, it actually releases clean oxygen into the air at night, whereas most only do that during the day. This makes them ideal toddler-safe houseplants for the bedroom. They also check off a lot of additional kid-friendly boxes: non-toxic and very easy to care for. They easily tolerate temperatures from 60-80 and are fine without full light, making them pretty ideal houseplants in general, but great for a kid’s room.
- Venus Flytrap: Older kids love the novelty of plant that eats bugs. Venus flytraps may look exotic, but they’re actually native to North America, and originally could be found growing in the Carolinas.
- Sensitive Plant: Hands on learning is great for kids, and this plant is extra fun to touch. A member of the pea family, also known as a humble plant, it responds to being touched by quickly folding in its leaves and drooping. It’s a perfect way to illustrate how plants are living things too.
- Pineapple Top: One really special way to use plants as a learning opportunity is to grow the plant from a seed or cutting. Children are able to take great pride in having nurtured the plant from its first existing. Of course there are many plants to choose from to do this with, a really fun one is the pineapple top. You may not have even known that you can use a pineapple top from a supermarket to create a new plant. It’s the perfect way to illustrate the process where a lot of our food comes from.
- Aloe Vera: A lot of our medicines were originally derived from plants, and humans have a long history of using the healing property of plants. An aloe plant is a perfect way to demonstrate this for kids, as inside each leaf is a gel that has many healing properties, including being soothing for a small burn (from the sun or kitchen). They also have the additional advantage of being extremely easy to care for. Just don’t over water this succulent.