Very Veggie Fun

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This afternoon we picked our first two tomatoes off the little plant we have been nursing in our garden.  It was rewarding for the kiddos.  Unfortunately, rather than getting eaten they ended up squished by Mr. 2yo.  Oops! 

Anyway, it got me thinking about collecting some veggie crafts and activities.

Living Locurto put together the most adorable fresh vegetable bouquets.

The School Vegetable Patch used slices of vegetables to make artistic prints.

These On The Farm Vegetable Puppets from Kids' Activities look like a fun project. (You will have to scroll down the page a bit for this activity)

If you are just starting your garden, perhaps you would like to make markers for your vegetables like these from Kiddie Gardens.  (This site is also a good resource for other home garden suggestions)

I Can Teach My Child used  some favorite veggie characters to make stained glass art for their sunny summer windows.

Danielle's Place suggests several veggie tale projects.  I especially like the veggie balloon creatures.

Catholic Icing explains a very simple DIY veggie toy.

Cheerios Underfoot shares a tutorial for making Larry the Cucumber.

Pam's House has created mini lesson plans to accompany several episodes of Veggie Tales.

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Spring Gardening & Planting Activities

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Lightning Bug Lit has put together an amazing, full color, printable package of preschool learning activities based on a gardening theme. The unit includes counting practice, number recognition, matching, drawing lines, and much more! Although we are unable to show you a sneak peek picture here on ABC & 123, you won't want to miss this link!

Homeschool Creations has shared a 2 part preschool garden printable pack.

Enchanted Learning has a Label the Garden Tools printable created as an english to spanish tutor worksheet. However, you could easily print 2 of these coloring pages and use the graphics to make a thematic matching game or to pratice new vocabulary terms.

Katina's Little Gardeners explains the life cycle of plants and provides some interesting links.

Quirky Momma shares a cute, colorful, and effective way for practicing counting with this imitation flower garden.

The Adventures of Bear encouraged an appreciation for nature with flower identification cards used for flower hunts on occassional nature walks.

Mama Pea Pod posted about their seed planting activity.

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Flower Activities

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We first put out a call for flower activities way back at the beginning of spring but for one reason or another it never fit into our schedule. We've gotten great submissions filled with fun and creative ways to incorporate flowers into art projects and lessons. We knew some how, some way we wanted to make sure these got featured. Since several are artistic projects we knew that this week when we're featuring great kits to help make crafting and art time easier, was the perfect time to showcase them. Plus there is still plenty of time and many more summer blooms left in the year, to make these lessons great ones to incorporate into your plans soon!

Flower Art


Sara at One Mom, Five Boys answered our first call for flower submissions. Thanks for being so patient! We love your watercolor flower garden!

Aren't these rolled paper flowers that Trish from Preschool Playbook shared cute and fun looking?

Trish also shared these Poppin' Good flowers made with popcorn.

She also made these really fun fingerprint flowers and bugs projects with her preschool class.

As you can probably tell already, Trish's flower unit towards the end of the year is a big one! Her class also helped make this collaborative bulletin board, what a fun way to decorate the classroom.

Michelle at A Mommy's Adventure and her daughter made these dandelion prints, turning those pesky weeds into an art experience!

Angie at Fun with Kiddos sent us these really neat handprint lillies, wouldn't a bunch look pretty as an always fresh bouquet?

Flower Projects

Donni at the Magic Onion shared this wonderful post on The Flower Ball, full of imagination! What a wonderful and different way of looking at spring's bounty!

Michelle at A Mommy's Adventure sent us this adorable flower craft that she and her daughter use when they sing a song about planting and growing. They also did a real planting activity and are growing celery!

Brandi from Adventures of a Flake sent us this book and "planting" activity. This would also make a quick and easy gift even a young child can make.

Flower Themed Learning Activity


Michaela at Not Really Homeschooling did a great Wild Flower lesson with her 3 year old, the objective was to recognize flowers when you come across them, knowing whether they're poisonous and what you can do with them; establishing a love of nature, being observant.

Bobbi at Casa Camacho made this fun handprint and parts of a flower activity.

Trish at Preschool Playbook also did a parts of a flower activity. She had her students use yarn to emphasize the different parts.

Basia from United Teaching created I Spy Nature Cards and has them available for you to download. These would be great to take along on your next walk. She also shares her Flowers and Gardening Unit Outline, here. You may also be interested in her Flower Matching Cards.

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Gardening and Planting Activities

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Gardening is a wonderful learning activity to do with your child. Children are naturally curious and full of energy that's just waiting to be harnessed! Choosing which plants to grow, digging in the dirt, and then having the fun of watering it day is something most kids will be interested in without too much prodding.

Turn up the learning factor by making predictions: which plant will grow the fastest, which one the highest, and so on. Keep record journals and measure your plants growth with a ruler, younger children can draw pictures of their plants a set intervals to track the changes as their plants grow. Try planting a jelly bean, and seeing what happens, there's always someone hoping that candy will soon be popping through the ground!

Plus it's very rewarding to your child to reap the benefits of gardening, a meal or side dish made with fruits or vegetables that he or she has grown and nutured. It also teaches kids about all the work that goes into farming and appreciation for the food we eat each day.

It seems that a lot of our members have a green thumb! Go see what all our gardeners in training have been working on with their parents! If you have an activity or a favorite book about gardening please share it with us and leave a comment!

Teaching Tiny Tots has submitted a great article about planting a vegetable or herb garden.



CanTeach has a fun list of gardening poems and tunes!

The Magic Onions shares about the delights & lessons in planting mint!



She also shares about the daily wonders in a moss garden.



This fairy garden is also from The Magic Onions. Check out her post on finding fairy furniture.



Adventures of a Flake made cute Fairy Gardens



She also planted radishes as a play date activity.

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Teacher Feature: Book Review

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The following book was reviewed by Amy @ Teach Mama on Sunday, April 19, 2009 & is re-posted here with her permission.

The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart and illustrations by David Small, is honestly one of the most beautiful children's books I have ever read.



The story takes place during the Depression and is told through letters that Lydia Grace writes to her Grandmother and parents after she leaves them to spend a year working with her surly uncle in his bakery in the city. She brings her love of gardening to her uncle's shop and ultimately brings some sunshine to a previously depressed town.

The Gardener: Because we've been re-potting our terrarium, talking about our upcoming tour at a garden center, and beginning to start our outside garden, this was a great book to read tonight before bed.


Maddy has also been doing a lot of reading in her own books, so I could tell that Owen's been feeling frustrated. Tonight, I wanted to show them both how some authors use pictures to tell the story. Several parts of this book use two-page illustrations to carry the narrative, so I modeled how to examine the inside cover illustration.


I modeled my thinking:
"Oh my goodness! Look at this incredible garden! I can see so many plants and vegetables growing here. Look at the sunflowers! See the lettuce? What else do you notice? . . . Look at the little girl showing the woman--maybe her grandma?--that huge tomato! It looks like she must feel proud of that tomato. They must work very hard to make their garden grow."


Then we looked closely at the following pages' illustrations and talked through what we saw.

We asked questions and made observations:
I wonder why those two people look so sad?
What will they say when the little girl comes back with food from the garden?


When I finally got into the reading, Owen got the hang of it and could clearly explain what he saw. When he talked us through Lydia Grace's arrival at the train station, I cheered--You did it! Owen, you're reading! You don't always have to use words to read; sometimes there are no words, so you use the pictures! That's exactly what reading is--using the words and the pictures to tell the story! That's exactly how Maddy is learning to read her books--and you're doing the same thing. Good for you.


And that's how we walked through The Gardner, talking about how the author uses both Lydia Grace's letters and the illustrations to tell the story. What a beautiful walk it was--I'll take this kind of learning any day.

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