Preschool Gardening Unit

Kaleb has been VERY excited about school time this week and I feel like we have done an amazing amount of things together! The moment breakfast was done, he was pulling things out of his workboxes and wanting to get started.

We didn’t do every thing every single day, but I broke things up over the course of the week for our gardening unti {click on the thumbnail to see my plans for the week}.

There were a few things that we DID do every day:

• Read our Bible verse together {Matthew 4:8}
• sang our Garden song
• read the book Jack’s Garden by Henry Cole and sequenced the story order
• played Help the Plant Grow! game {over and over again….}

Otherwise, here’s a look at some of the things that we did together while learning about plants and gardening! You can download a copy of the Gardening Preschool and Kindergarten Pack here and join in the fun with us!

Language/Pre-Reading

• Vocabulary words including cultivator, trowel, hose, soil, etc….
• Tell what happened in the story and favorite part of the story
• Beginning sounds cards {both find the beginning letter and write/trace the beginning letter}
• Rhyming words {i.e. hose/nose, pot/hot, etc…}
• Story sequencing ~ we primarily used the book Jack’s Garden by Henry Cole and after we read the story each day we sequenced the picture and sentence strips

Stories & Books We Used

Math

• Sequencing ~ we sequenced the growth of a plant and a flower from bulb to full sized

• Count the Cabbage game ~ I hid a small trowel behind one of the cabbages {you can use up to 20} and Kaleb had to identify the number on the cabbage and then count up to that number. We put the pieces in a small pocket chart and hung it on the wall to play.
• Shapes and Colors ~ Kaleb named the shapes and colors of flowers for me in one of the mini-books I put together

Fine Motor/Writing

• letter tracing sheets: letters P, G, and S
• Water the Flower line tracing sheets

Science

All week we’ve been talking about the parts of a flower and what a plant needs to grow. All of the printables come from the Gardening Printable Pack.

• Parts of a flower ~ The first day I had the flower cut up into only four parts {so that the word was connected to the picture}. The remaining days Kaleb put the flower pieces together and then had to find the right word to match with the flower piece {he would say the word and then look for the beginning sound}.
• Vegetable and Flower sort ~ Kaleb sorted ‘seed packets’ by whether they were vegetables or flowers

Games/Songs

• What Do Plants Need to Grow? We sang a fun little song all week that talked about four things that plants need to grow ~ soil, water, air and sun
• Help the Plant Grow! game ~ we played this game several times each day {Kaleb thought it was so fun!}. We had a set of cards showing pictures of things plants need {or don’t need} to grow. If it was something that helps them, Kaleb could color in a part of the flowers stem until the stem was all the way up to the flower. I included some silly things in the cards like milk, candy and a paintbrush…which made him giggle every time.
• Seed Packet matching ~ Kaleb tried to match a picture of a vegetable to the name of the veggie by looking for beginning sounds

Crafts/Hands-On Learning

 

• Garden Sensory Tub ~ We had several days of great weather, so Kaleb enjoyed playing in our Garden Sensory Tub {click to see what we put in our box!}
• Parts of a flower craft ~ quick craft showing the parts of a flower {flower, leaves, stem and roots}
• Veggie Basket cut/paste ~ I had a sheet that Kaleb cut out all of the veggies and then ‘gathered’ them by gluing them into a basket