If you’ve read my other articles about my childhood, you may remember how many good memories I attribute to my birding and gardening experiences with my mom. In the spirit of family gardening, I will be adding several activities which are great for children during the summer months.
As we have talked about in previous articles, flower gardening is a wonderful activity for your children. Even the youngest toddler is able to dig in the dirt and learns about texture from grabbing a handful of the warm brown granules. Preschoolers and older children also learn many things through the most simple tasks associated with flower gardening. Here are a few activities and suggestions to help you teach your child through flower gardening.
Make A Seed and Flower Book
The goal here is to make a book which contains a picture of the flower and an example of the seed. If you haven’t planted your summer flower garden yet, remember to save the paper packages that the seeds come in. For those of you who buy plants from the nursery, you can save the picture tags that come with your flowers. You will also want to save a few seeds which will be added to your book.
Make sure you use zip-lock bags or something to help you identify which seeds go with each packet. If you have already planted your flower garden, you may want to buy a few packets of seeds (things that you planted) just for your child and this activity.
Materials:
- 1 Ziplock bag for each kind of flower
- Empty seed packets – Cut picture of flower/plant on the front into neat rectangle
- 1 or 2 seeds from each seed packet. Store picture and matching seed in same ziplock bag
- 1 Sheet of colored construction paper
- White construction paper or copy paper – It’s good to have extra pages!
- Stapler and staples
- Markers or Crayons
- Clear packing tape (needs to be wide)
- Glue sticks (optional)
- Scissors
Directions for Basic Book:
- Stack all paper together neatly. Place on a table so that the long sides are on the top and bottom.
- Fold entire stack (all at once) from left to right. Pinch the fold with your fingers.
- Staple along the folded edge (about 4 staples in a line) approximately 1/2 to 1 inch from the edge. Make sure the staples catch the white paper.
There you have a basic book which can be used for many projects.
Adding Content to Pages:
Tell your child that you need help making a book.
- Think of a name for your book and write the title on the cover. You may also want to glue pictures to the cover.
- Pull out the flower pictures which you have already cut from the seed packets.
- Glue a flower picture on a page. Leave back of page blank.
- Get a seed that came from the package. Use the clear wide tape to secure the seed below the picture.
- Repeat glue-and-tape process for each picture and seed until you have matched each seed with it’s flower.
Book Activities
- Read the book with your child.
- Discuss what is seen in each picture.
- Describe the seeds
- Discussions to have and questions to ask – How many blue flowers are in this book? Red? Yellow? etc. How many are big? How many are small? How many have big leaves? How many have small leaves? Show me: the wrinkled seeds, smooth seeds, small seeds, large seeds,etc.
- Have your child draw a picture of the flower and/or the seed on a different sheet of paper.
- Call out a letter of the alphabet and ask your child to find that letter in the book.
- Use extra seeds to have your child match the seed in his hand (or from a seed box) to one in the book.
Extend Your Gardening Activities
So what can you do after the kids’ gardening activities and projects are completed? You extend the fun by bringing the garden indoors with cooking lessons!
For great step-by-step, illustrated, recipes and even more food related activities see our growing list of educational, seasonal cooking lessons on our cooking site. Great for homeschooling lessons or easy family bonding activities.
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