Gardening Activities

Gardening is a wonderful lesson to include in classrooms of all ages.  Children love feeling the dirt, watching bugs, and other curious activities.  This lesson not only teaches where our food comes from and the importance of nutrition, but also teaches about nature and how to work as a team.

Making their own garden is a fun activity for all children.  This can be done very affordably by recycling household items into gardening supplies and containers.  Paper cups and egg cartons make excellent pots for sprouting.  This allows children to watch sprouts as they first begin to grow and initiates discussions.  This is an excellent time to explain to children what plants need to grow and the correlation between a seedling and a growing child.  Milk cartons and jugs make excellent watering cans and having each child bring in their own watering container teaches them ownership.  This allows each child to contribute to watering the garden and working together for one purpose.  This helps the kids to interact with each other and work as a team.  Moreover, digging holes, watering plants, and weeding help to improve gross motor skills.

A fun addition to your gardening lessons is to create a meal from the foods you have grown at the end of the season.  For example, growing tomatoes, onions, herbs, etc. will allow you to make pasta sauce or pizza sauce for a class meal.  This teaches the children where their food comes from and can lead into a discussion on the importance of farmers and good nutrition.

Food gardens are fun, but not the only option out there.  A butterfly garden is an excellent idea to teach observational skills and life cycles.  In order to do this, grow plants that are appealing to butterflies.  Instruct the children to take notes of the different colors of butterflies, different markings, sizes, etc.  You can then have a group discussion on their favorite butterflies and what they saw.  If constructed at the right time, you can display caterpillars and their life cycle into a beautiful butterfly.  These lessons can also be made more detailed and science-oriented for older students.

Lastly, other lessons can always be incorporated into any of these activities.  Language and alphabet lessons can be intertwined by including garden related coloring sheets.  Flash cards and labels can be constructed with helpful phonetic lessons such as G is for garden, C is for carrot, and so on.  Wood Designs' bins and lids are the perfect containers for gardening supplies and organization.

Gardens are an excellent year long activity that teaches children many things.  Social interaction and team work are beneficial lessons learned in the process along with plant and animal life cycles.  Nutritional lessons and tasty meals can also result from fun garden time inside and outside of the classroom.  All in all, great lessons that are fun and informative will liven up your curriculum and help students process in new ways.