Gardening Unit: Pre-K 4

Ana's Week

​Doing a gardening unit really is the perfect way to kick spring off with your kids. While my husband and I are not green thumbs by any stretch of the imagination, or perhaps because we are not, we really enjoyed using the girls to help us garden as we figured it out for ourselves. No guarantees that anything we planted will actually grow, but the girls loved digging and putting seeds into holes. Plus, my husband and I were able to get the yard cleaned and weeded and the windows scrubbed all while the kids helped with the gardening and got several hours of outdoor time. I love when we can combine school and chores into one, and I’m super glad that the kids seem to agree!

Because early in the week was wet and cold, I was really glad that I planned plenty of indoor activities in addition to the gardening outside. We planted an amazing Fairy Garden Kit that came with grass and bean seeds. It incorporated art, gardening, and pretend play, so it was probably Aria’s favorite activity of the week. Plus, the grass grew very quickly, so we were able to see the grass grow from seed to plant within the week. We also planted an indoor garden with beans, basil, and peppers, and Aria can’t wait to see which if any of those vegetables grow. Hopefully she will be excited enough to try them all!

Another fun activity was one that I came up with off the top of my head in the dollar store. I found fake flowers and their matching seeds and had Aria match seeds to flowers and learn flower names. We did the same with vegetable seeds- matching vegetables to their seeds and examining the vegetables to see if the dried seeds matched what we saw (aka, yes in carrots and corn, but no in lettuce and carrots). We then planted the flower seeds in a flower box and the vegetable seeds in our large garden box.

Aria became fascinated with drawing and making flowers during the week, so I did an impromptu flower lesson one day. I drew a basic flower and she copied what I did (at least, until she decided that a queen caterpillar needed to be next to the flower). She then spent the rest of the week drawing and painting flowers on everything she could find. I love that she loves art so much and is always happy to learn and create!

The only thing we didn’t get around to doing was creating a toddler compost bin because I couldn’t find the materials in time! But I am so excited to do this over the summer and get the kids to help create our own gardening soil. I’ll keep you posted on if this works, because I would be personally so delighted to find a cheap compost bin alternative!

Middle of the week, Aria got inspired and decided to build a jungle on our kitchen table. Of course, it took several hours and meant we didn’t do much of our schooling for the day, but she had a blast building trees and drawing flowers all over the jungle, so I felt it didn’t stray too far from the material. Plus, it was just such a fun, creative jaunt. Check out Creative Galaxy on Amazon if you want your child to be super inspired- it works wonders with Aria!

If you have some gardening you need to get done, I absolutely recommend getting your kids involved. Not only is it fun for them to play in the dirt and sprinklers, all of which are easy to incorporate into the day, but I think pickier kids are more likely to eat plants that they feel they grew themselves. Aria looks into the garden every day so excited to see what will grow, and I can’t say I disagree. Looking forward to some yummy summer fruits and veggies in the next month! ​

Jessica's Week

Our big gardening project this year was running an irrigation line from the house out to the garden (maybe 700ft away). Dave dug the ditch and laid down pipe and we gave Taegan the chore of filling it all back in. Big task, but split up over several days it was totally doable to ask a four yr old to shovel in all the dirt and stomp it down level. The yard is still a little messy but we found some interesting bugs and I’ll be very thankful not hauling my little green can to and fro in the heat of summer.  For a reward she got to pick out her own small flower plant from the local nursery to plant in her garden (We have a special raised bed in the garden devoted to kids where she can plant and dig to her hearts content without disturbing any of our edibles). I just LOVE when a “present” is something the whole family can enjoy like pretty garden plants. 
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Another chore turned learning activity this week was compost stew. This one was completely unplanned but it just so happened one of the gardening books I checked out of the library was titled “Compost Stew”. It was all about the many things you can compost. Now I have to be honest, I sadly don’t keep a compost pile. I’ll have to admit my own laziness when it comes to tending and turning a pile of smelly refuse. Just because we don’t officially compost however, doesn’t mean we can’t add some nutrients to the garden on a small scale. I took a couple fresh banana peels, used coffee grounds, and eggshells (all from our breakfast) and let her grind them up with some grass clippings and dead leaves. Mix into water and presto...ready made compost for the garden!

We did have a couple rainy days that were not so great for working outdoors but moving the garden theme inside turned out to be just as fun. It’s one thing to know how to count numbers, another to recognize them visually, but at least for my child there seems to be a whole new skill set involved with learning to visually order them correctly without assistance. We worked on this skill a lot this week by “planting a number line”. Walmart sells mini terra cotta pots for only .30 so I put together a sensory bin with some black beans and split peas for soil. It was great to plant toob flowers and veggies but after free play I made some number flowers by gluing a cupcake liner to popsicle stick and sharpie-ing on a number. T enjoyed planting each number and lining them up over and over. I was proud she even reasoned that the flower color created a pattern and could line them by color pattern as well as numerical order. We used silk daises to order the letters of her name and a few other sight words. So much learning just by planting!!! I highly recommend a gardening sensory bin. 

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