Fairy garden houses, garden sensory bins, starter gardens, snacking fresh from the garden with food art, and more!
G A R D E N theme is here! This is another week that is jam-packed with resources and fun, CHEAP things to do, no matter where you live. It’s also relatively easy to find an “expert” on the topic to give you recommendations or hang out with you and your wild littles for a day, just walking around the yard, looking at and talking about which plants are what. We spent some time in our auntie & uncle’s yard, talking about the plants in the planter boxes, and our garden enthusiast Grandma came over one evening to help us start a pumpkin patch in our backyard and teach the boys to make jam! We also explored local nurseries, and walked around downtown, admiring the flower beds along the sidewalks. Easy and accessible. One of the best (and easiest) parts about doing themed learning weeks is that you can find connections to your topic wherever you go, seeking whatever opportunities for connections that are right in front of you! Check out my Garden Theme Pinterest Page and pick some activities that interest you and your babes.
Let’s get started with some discussion questions to discover what your kids are most interested in learning more about, and use them to guide your teaching and Pinterest-ing:
- What is the life cycle of a plant?
- What are the parts of a plant? Which part produces the seeds, that then reproduce the plant?
- What do plants need to survive, grow, and thrive?
- What is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?
- What types of bugs help gardens, and which don’t?
R E A D I N G
We found a TON of gardening books at the library that focus on seeds, the plant life cycle, and kid-centered gardening activities. One of our books even included recipes for plant-based foods! Here are just a few of the many we took home:
- From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons: Do you know how a seed begins? What pollination is? How flowers, fruits, and vegetables get to be the way they are? The mystery of how seeds are formed and grow into plants is revealed for young readers in this informative book.
- Plant Secrets by Emily Goodman: Plants come in all shapes and sizes, but they go through the same stages as they grow. Using four common plants, young readers learn about a plant’s life cycles. Simple text and colorful illustrations show the major phases of plant growth: seed, plant, flower, and fruit.
- What Kinds of Seeds are These? by Heidi Bee Roemer: This spirited text enumerates in riddle-form the many ways different kinds of seeds travel, whether by helicopter or rolling in the wind as a tumbleweed. Fun activities are included at the end to help readers discover the world of seeds up close. Gorgeous illustrations of seeds and plants and children enjoying them leap from the pages
- What’s in the Garden? by Marianne Berkes: Good food doesn’t begin on a store shelf with a box. It comes from a garden bursting with life, color, sounds, smells, sunshine, moisture, birds, and bees! Healthy food becomes much more interesting when children know where they come from. Kids will find a variety fruits and vegetables, and a tasty, kid-friendly recipe for each one to start a lifetime of good eating.
A R T
We had a lot of fun making art throughout garden week, and some of it was impromptu. One day while I was crafting for a baby shower, my son decided he wanted to draw pictures of plants existing in our backyard- he did a great marker representation of a Yucca! We also had some scratch-art paper lying around the house and used it as canvas for more garden art. Perhaps the best part (my son is a sucker for sculpture building) was creating our very own fairy garden made from an old cardboard box, items from the yard, and other things we found around the house.
- Check out this list of 12 Super Cute Garden Crafts for Kids by The Realistic Mama. You’ll find inspiration for stepping stones, butterfly-footprint pots (I’ve gotten these for Mother’s Day from both of my kids and I adore them), painted rock bugs, and more.
- We had so much fun with our Fairy Garden project (this one by Well Living Mom), and it was pretty easy to put together. I didn’t have much of the items recommended, except for an old applesauce box, popsicles, and art supplies, so we improvised. My eldest ended up learning how to sift the dirt in our backyard (he insisted the fairies have a soft floor), and we added rose petals, painted rocks, plastic bugs, and a tiny popsicle-stick bridge.
- Kid Made Bird Feeders by Growing a Jeweled Rose include ideas for making bird houses with a wide variety of materials, like popsicle sticks, upcycled items, and even legos. Add birdseed, and you’re set.
- Painted rocks! Collect a few small-ish, soft-edged rocks, wash them, and have the kids paint symbols of the fruits and veggies in your own garden. Ours turned out super cute.
S E N S O R Y & S T E M (science. technology. engineering. math.)
The reason we decided to kick off summer 2017 with Garden Week is twofold: One, the kids wanted to learn about “flowers and plants,” and two, we were gearing up to start little vegetable gardens in our backyard, so why not tie it all together? Gardening for kids is a great way to introduce concepts like osmosis (how plants receive water), photosynthesis (for the older kiddos), and terms like pollen, sprout, root, and seed. The science is built in!
- A hands-on, applicable, and productive way to apply STEM learning is to have your kids try out gardening in your home. Invest in some tiny gardening gloves and check out this list of the 10 best veggies to grow with kids by Picklebums to get you started. If you don’t have space in your yard, try starting seeds in an egg carton or clear plastic cups so kids can watch the germination process, and then transport them to pots later. We planted some veggies (carrots, peas, pumpkins) from seeds and bought starters of others (cherry tomatoes) so our boys could watch the growth process at various stages. They loved it, and we’ll continue to reap the delicious & nutritious benefits.
- The Celery Experiment by Teaching Tiny Tots: I’m sure we all did this science experiment in school at one point or another. The concept is osmosis (how plants receive water from their roots) and the outcome is highly visual and cool. Ours didn’t work very well, I think because our celery was pretty old. Invest in the fresh stuff and watch the stalks and leaves change color right in front of your eyes.
- Garden Sensory Bin by Mess For Less. We didn’t do this one because we planted so many new fruits and veggies is our yard, it was the same idea. But if you’re not going to plant anything, this is a perfect project for the littles to get their hands in the dirt, especially the younger kiddos.
C O O K I N G
I had big ideas (thanks to Pinterest) for this area, and because of a couple of picky eaters in my house, I ended up improvising. Mid-week, I had the idea that it would be really feasible and applicable to incorporate a fresh, garden veggie dish with every meal (or at least dinner) and let the kids help prepare. One-and-done. Or, for snack time, put out a bunch of fresh fruits and veggies, cut them as needed, and let the kids create fruit-and-veggie flowers on their plates! Food art success! For garden week, the cooking aspect is essentially built into the learning.
- Lady Bug Caprese by Mom.Me: I thought these were so cute, but my kids don’t like olives so we bagged it. Instead, we made our own flower art using cut up fruit and veggies (including cherry tomatoes!).
- Earth Day Dirt Cups by Mothering with Creativity: My kids LOVED these. We also did these for Bug Week last summer, but it never hurts to repeat a project and show connections between different topics. This is a dessert, so pick an evening after dinner, let the kids lead the “cooking” of the instant pudding, add chopped Oreos and gummy worms, and chow down on these delicious garden nutrients!
- Make jam from freshly picked berries (field trip/sensory/cooking integration, perhaps?)! We were lucky enough to have our expert gardener, Grandma, come over and do this with the boys after she’d picked fresh strawberries at our local farm (we’re saving that for Farm Week), but here is an easy recipe for Strawberry Jam that you could totally follow on your own.
F I E L D T R I P S
Garden field trips are so fun and accessible, no matter where you live. We took walks around the neighborhood and city and pointed out garden areas and different plants, spent time in our friends’ and family members’ gardens, looking at things that grow, and took every opportunity to explore plant life all around us. One great thing to do is visit local nurseries. We purchased seeds and plants at our local Home Depot’s garden center, and visited two nurseries in the area – Swanson’s Nursery and Lil Sprout Nursery & Garden Center. Visit my Instagram page to see my kids getting their garden on all over town.
One of the most fun and engaging garden activities that we did this week was spending half of a day going on a nature scavenger hunt! I downloaded the activity page from kidsgardening.org (an awesome resource for all things kid-gardening related), and off we went! That day, we visited Swanson’s and found grasses, flowers, and trees, traveled to the public Rose Garden just outside of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and saw squirrels, soil, and bugs, and finished the day with a bike ride around Greenlake, where we continued to spot nature. Did I mention that all of these field trips, and most of the activities, are FREE? Enjoy!
