one of the ways i thought up to involve the littles (even more) in gardening this year was to create a garden journal. this is a place to keep a record of a select group of plants. not only is this educational, but it combines a lot of great kiddo friendly projects.
want to make your own?
it is super simple. i let luca and gia go to town on some of this year's seed catalogs to cut out pictures. (i trimmed their selections - see above - due to
each of them picked plants to "be in charge of" and we added one piece of lined paper and several pieces of blank paper to the binder for each.
luca's choices: blueberries, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, chocolate tomatoes, dill, cilantro, radishes, spinach, and lettuces
gia's choices: strawberries, raspberries, carrots, cucumbers
on the lined paper, i wrote out several categories (name, sowing/planting date, days to germination, date harvested, and observations) and where possible, luca is filling out the information. for observations, i ask them to describe the plant to me.
what do you see? what color is it? what shape is it?
with the blank paper, we draw our visual observations of the plants. (reminder to self: pick up clipboards!)
it was a bit sunny this day.
in the array above, we have (starting at upper left and going clockwise) a radish, clematis, luca's blurry hand, and mulit-colored lettuce leaves. (all drawn by luca) aren't they great?
what i love most about this project is that the love of writing & drawing and the love growing things just feed off of each other. such a fun cycle. its a pretty great educational tool, don't you think?
luca has been much more interested than gia-bee, but that is understandable with skill level and attention span taken into account. luca is quite alright with that. no sharing colored pencils with little sister is a plus i guess. sigh
these two didn't seem to mind. they were off in their own little gia-goo world. all wrapped up in each other. love it.
want to see other great "gardening with littles" ideas? check out the kinderGARDENS link party for this week!
(and check below for some other fun parties too)
7 comments:
What a great idea! When Matthew gets older, I'd love to have him keep one.
We do nature journals in homeschool but I never thought of something just for the garden...brilliant! I am so going to steal this idea!
My darling daughter had the same little club when her brother was younger, so sweet.
super post, Kim
A garden journal is an awesome idea! Cutting out pictures, drawing plants, and practicing handwriting ~ lesson planning at its finest! My son is finishing 1st grade in June and would really get into a project like that.
Have a great, long weekend. Cheers ~ Conny
You are so creative! That is such a cute idea. Have you read any Charlotte Mason? She was one of the original Homeschoolers and this is an idea she really advocated! It really sets a good discipline for later years to keep a journal.
Garden Journals... what a GREAT idea! I LOVE it!
Pretty sure I'm gonna steal this idea when my littles get big enough! ....so awesome!
Oh, what a great idea! I'll have to steal this if I ever have kids :)
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