What Children Learn in the Garden

Gross Motor 

• Hauling dirt, compost, mulch
• Digging 
• Moving plants 
• Weeding
• Picking produce 

Health Knowledge

• Good/not-so-good foods 
• Need for exercise 
• Clean air 
• Clean environment 
• Clean hands & bodies
• Bacteria in the environment 

Nutrition 

• Nutritional value of different foods 
• Which foods are good for what parts of your body

Here's what I came up with in about 10 minutes last night. 

LIFE

Environmental Stewardship: 

• We need to keep our water and soils clean
• Some plants may not be around if we don't collect and plant their seeds
• We need the insects 
• We have to be careful with chemicals so that bugs, plants and people won't be hurt
• How to keep animals out of the garden without hurting them
• The natural world is important to protect

Farming/Gardening Skills:

• How to germinate seeds
• How to plant, weed, cultivate, amend soil, crop rotation, etc.
• How to collect and store seeds
• Companion planting
• Pest control
• Different plant needs

Self Reliance:

• Ability to provide food and natural products for yourself and others

SCIENCE

Biology

• Life cycle of plants, animals and insects
• What lives in the soil
• Decomposition
• Biomes

Botany

• Plant physiology
• Common and scientific plant names
• Pollination
• Plant classifications

Environmental Science

• Composting
• Reduce, reuse, recycle
• Environmental awareness

Entemology

• Insect identification
• Insect anatomy
• Pests vs helpers
• Bug/insect classifications

Meterology

• Weather
• Weather patterns
• Cloud formations
• Temperature, rainfall and wind assessments

Scientific Method

• Predicting - What will happen if we give this one extra water?
• Discussing - Why do you think that is? What if we give it too MUCH water?
• Experimenting 
• Discussing results
• Comparison to other experiments - Did the water make more of a difference or less of a difference than adding compost?

Math

• Comparison of size, shape, color, height, weight, growth, etc.
• Classification of plants, insects, animals, seeds, produce, etc.
• Counting seeds, plants, rows, produce, rainfall amounts, etc.
• Economics of how much we save by growing our own food and why - shipping, labor, etc.
• Estimation of how much items weigh, how much water they need, how much rainfall we had, etc.
• Equations - If we have 4 blueberry plants on this side, and 4 blueberry plants on that side, how many do we have in all? If we have 4 rows of 4 bush beans, how many do we have in all?
• Graphing of temperature, rainfall, plant growth, weekly circumfrence growth of  a pumpkin, etc.
• Measurement of rainfall, shadows, height, weight, circumference, pounds of produce, etc.
• Geometry - shapes in the garden, building boxes, paths, etc. 
• Statistics - Did we get more or less beans than peas? Was it a LOT more, or a little more? If they took up the same amount of space, which one is the better producer? Which one should we plant more of next year? - YES, the one we LIKE THE MOST!
• Time - tracking the sun across the garden, seasons, planning, plant growth, cycles
• Tracking growth, production, chores

PHYSICAL

Fine Motor  

• Planting seeds and plants 
• Weeding 
• Picking produce 
• Collecting seed 
• Picking up bugs

Observation 

• Awareness of even the smallest element in the environment

Sensory 

• Seeing butterflies, bees, colors, shadows, sunbeams, changing shapes
• Feeling the wind, the many plant textures, soil vs. clay
• Hearing the birds, insects, leaves rustling in the wind, mulch crunching with each step
• Tasting the many flavors of herbs and produce
• Smelling the herbs, soil, flowers, produce

LANGUAGE ARTS

Narration

• Talking about their observations, ideas, experiments
• Educating and advising the younger children
• Discussing and negotiating about chores and responsibilities
• Asking questions, explaining to others

Reading

• Plant markers
• Seed packets
• Graphs, charts, instructions

Vocabulary

• Plant names & parts
• Insect names & parts
• Gardening terminology
• Discussion vocabulary

Writing

• In the dirt with sticks
• Drawing pictures of plants, insects, animals, ideas
• Plotting out the garden
• Observations, graphs, notations

SOCIAL

Negotiation

• What to plant
• Where to plant
• What to harvest for lunch
• What to do with what we harvest
• Who gets to do what when

Patience

• Waiting for seeds to germinate
• Waiting for plants to grow
• Waiting for produce to mature
• Waiting for our turn

Responsibility

• The garden must be watered
• The weeds must be pulled
• The produce must be collected
• The seeds must be collected

Team Work

• Working with others to plant, harvest and care for the garden

Work Ethic

• Doing your job, even if it isn't the job you wanted
• Working with your group, even if you would rather go play
• Handling your responsibilities with a good attitude

ART

Crafts

• Crafts for the garden - stepping stones, signs, totems, sculpture
• Crafts from materials collected from the garden
• Painting and drawing about the garden

Colors

• Names of colors
• Comparisons of colors
• Color changes

Light

• Observation of light vs. shadow
• Color changes in various lights
• Reflections
• Rainbows
• Light on different textures

Movement

• Wiggling of a worm
• Nodding of a sunflower head
• Wind bending a tree
• Falling apples
• Floating of a butterfly
• Dancing through the garden

Above all they learn...

APPRECIATION FOR NATURE

of which, they are a part.

Follow Connie -'s board Plants / Garden Theme on Pinterest. Tags: preschool, garden, gardening, pre-k, home, child, children, kids, kid, daycare, care, theme, unit, math, language, science, sensory, movement, senses, five, 5 senses, 

Harvest Time - Marinara & Salsa

It's been rainy and muddy, and we have all been struck with hand, foot & mouth disease. Ugh! So the garden has been neglected for the past week. 

With the heat of summer, the garden was just bursting with goodies this morning that we needed to pick ASAP!

So, all hands on deck for harvesting!

We got a nice haul of an assortment of peppers and tomatoes, an acorn squash, beans, some cantaloupe and watermelon.

Tomatoes, however, were the agenda for the day. 

I do not seed my tomatoes prior to cooking. If that is your preference, please do so. While my marinara recipe is chock full of fresh herbs, dried can be used. As with any recipe, use what you like, what you have, and do it the way you want. Only in baking does one need to follow a recipe fairly exact.

MARINARA

I blanched the tomatoes...1 minute in boiling water, remove with a large slotted pasta spatula, and place into cold water.

You can really pack them into the pot.

If you cut the stem end off, then they just smoosh out of their skins easy peasy. 

I thought it would be a great sensory experience and a way for them to participate. For some reason, my non-squeemish kiddos wanted NOTHING to do with this process.  

Most of these are San Marzano tomatoes, evidently the best for marinara, if the current ads for Olive Garden are to be believed. Plus, I did check into it before I decided which to plant this year, and got the same info.

However, there are also a couple Better Boy, some cherry tomatoes and Romas in this lot. To ensure the salsa wouldn't be too juicy, I ran my immersion blender through some and set them in a colander over a bowl, covered, in the fridge to drain for the rest of the day. The rest I put in the crock pot on low for the marinara.

After nap, we collected the rest of our ingredients...

Garlic! This elephant garlic was given to me by my grandfather 20 years ago. It just keeps growing.

We gathered some larger cloves and re-planted the baby ones.

What does it smell like? "ONION!"

Close enough!

The garden is intended for extensive learning and to be a sensory explosion.

Since we have them, we just collected all the Italian-type herbs we grow that I thought would go well together. I had already collected basil yesterday, and we added...

Thyme and flat-leafed parsley,

oregano,

and rosemary.

Since they usually experience one plant at a time as they explore and forage, it was good for them to get a chance to feel and smell them as a group. A totally different sensory experience.

Many children are overwhelmed when they smell fresh herbs, but these children have been around them since birth, so to them, it's familiar and welcome.

I tossed our herbs and garlic into the crock pot.

Our onions didn't survive this year, so that was the one veggie that I purchased that went into the marinara. I chopped it, one of our smallish chocolate bells, and a small jalapeno that went in as well. 

It all got a whirl of the immersion blender and left to cook on low for about 12 hours, with the lid propped up on wooden skewers to let some of the liquid escape. If you don't want to do this, then drain your tomatoes as I did for the salsa.

Adding the fresh herbs at the beginning led to a very mild, amalgamated flavor to the marinara. This is good for storage, as it allows me to pep up the flavor according to what I will be cooking with it later. If I want more of a taste of rosemary, then I can add that when I re-heat, likewise with any herb. It makes the sauce more versatile. 

I looked at a few marinara recipes and took what I wanted from them and combined them into my own.

The elephant garlic is much milder, so even though it is bigger, it still takes as many cloves as regular garlic.

Marinara
 6 cups fresh tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
1 rosemary stem, leaves only, removed
3-4 stems thyme, leaves only, removed
3-4 stems oregano, leaves only, removed
1 small jalapeno chopped
1/2 large or 1 small bell pepper chopped
1 large yellow onion chopped
5 cloves garlic 
1/4 teaspoon fennel seed  
1 1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt [may need more]

Place all in a crock pot and blend with an immersion blender. Let cook a minimum of 3 hours on low.

Note: For the most intense flavor, add fresh herbs in the last hour of cooking, and blend again at end of cooking.

We are not allowed to can for child care, but we can freeze. I use my silicone molds to freeze individual portions. Each one holds exactly 1/3 cup. A serving is 1/4 cup, so this provides a little extra. I cover them, put them in my freezer [after digging out room], hit the "QUICK FREEZE" button, and pop them out later. They go into a labeled one gallon freezer bag. I can take out exactly as many as I need, so less waste.

SALSA

I use Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman's salsa recipe as my basis.

The garlic [not shown, I had to go dig some more up], flat-leafed parsley, jalapeno and onion were all chopped with my Pampered Chef chopper [which I LOVE! These stay sharp and don't break down using them as I do, directly on plates and cutting boards.]

It keeps everything a fine, even consistency, without the ingredients losing their individuality within the salsa. Ree uses her food processor, but I like mine a little more chunky. And the food processor is just such a pain to clean!

I had to buy cilantro, because ours bolted early, and this is what it currently looks like...

The children have been practicing those fine motor skills collecting the seeds for next year.

The salsa came out WONDERFUL!

I made the children chicken nachos, just added some taco spice to the chicken, and smothered them in the salsa.

Mr. G said, "This is the BEST. LUNCH. EVER!!"

It was right up there, anyway.
Tags: garden, gardening, preschoolers, pre-k, child, care, daycare, home, homeschooling, salsa, marinara, fresh, herbs, children, harvest, harvesting, farm, table, food, cycle, 

Spring/Garden Sensory Bin

Little Stars Learning

The children have loved our spring sensory bin.

Potting soil is heated to kill bacteria and other organisms, so it is great as a sensory bin filler, AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING ADDED such as fertilizer or water gel. You want the cheap-o kind.

The components and their learning activities:

FLOWERS AND BUTTERFLIES:

• Matching by color
• Grouping
• Pretend pollination
• Flower pot creation
• Fine motor
• Plant physiology
• Botany
• Biology

We tried making tissue paper flowers, but it was a craft FAIL, so I went ahead and bought silk ones at the dollar store. We made the butterflies, instructions at the end.

FRUITS & VEGETABLES with LABELS 

I gathered the plastic fruits and vegetables from the play kitchen. I went on-line and pulled images listed as FREE from the internet, printed them out, laminated, and adhered to craft sticks. I tried to make sure every growing type [vine, underground, above ground, etc.], and every type of edible part [root, leaf, seed, flower, etc.] was represented at least once, and preferably more than once.

• Sorting by item
• Sorting by type 
• Graphing
• Fine motor

FLOWER POTS

For ideas, I suggested that they could sort the plastic items into the pots by the size they actually become, or the plant labels. "Which pot would a watermelon go into? A radish?"

• Sizing
• Sorting
• Describing
• Fine motor

TOOLS

Scoops, cups, spoons, tweezers, containers, scrapers...

Tongs, funnels...and they had access to all our other sensory bin tools as well. These were just the ones I initially placed in there.

• Fine and gross motor
• Quantities
• Logic/reasoning
• Observation
  

SUN

Since the purpose is to discuss growing plants, I dropped a yellow balloon from the ceiling over where they played with the sensory bin as the sun. They thought that was great. We also got out the spray bottles and "rained" on the garden a few times.

• Biology
• Botony

BUTTERFLIES
We didn't have a fuse bead butterfly template, and I wanted them to be large enough not to easily break, so we used our heart template.

I fused one side, then they did the other. I fused that one. We made a circle for the head out of black beads which I fused and removed, then fused them all together between parchment paper.

It's a wonderful fine motor activity.

There are many activities they can do with this sensory bin, and they are still wanting to play with it a month after I first put it out...

Tags: sensory, bin, fine, motor, spring, spring sensory bin, garden, theme, unit, plants, growing, planting, gradening, farm, farming, crops, vegetables, fruits, labels, signs, flowers, child, care, daycare, preschool, pre-k, camp, summer 

Garden Totems

Saw these amazing garden totems on Pinterest, that I loved! Unfortunately, the link takes you to a Tumbler account that makes it nearly impossible to find the photo again, and there is no source information. 
 

Although the pin comment says "plastic and metal lids, the original looks to me to be made out of cut wood pieces. There are too many different shapes, they fit together too well, and the colors are the same for very different shapes and sizes of layers, leading me to believe they were painted, not found. If you are making a permanent sculpture, that may be an option if your woodworking capabilities are up to it.

For us, though, cheap and easy is how we fly. I think this one came out VERY similar in overall idea.

I've been having my clients, family and friends collect lids for me for almost a year. Not for this project, but for something else entirely. Now I need a few hundred more for several projects. 

SUPPLIES:
Block of wood to drill atop
3/8 inch spade bit
Adjustable pliers large enough to hold caps
5/16 inch diameter 4 foot long zinc coated steel rod

I had everything else, and purchased the rod at Home Depot

While using my Dad's drill press would have been NICE, it's buried somewhere in one of their outbuildings. Not wanting to pay $1400 for one, I thought this would work JUST FINE. And it did.

Many of the lids have a center point that is apparent due to the manufacturing process. Those that didn't, I just guessed. The spade bit has a sharp point, so it's easy to get it set in the plastic. I found that going slower was better. It left a cleaner edge. Going too fast caused the plastic to tear up and not cut off cleanly. For those I took a utility knife and cleaned the edges up.

When done, I had a basket full of items and some plastic confetti to clean up. It took less than half an hour to do all these. That may be stretching it pretty far. We were hanging outside and I had other things going on and didn't time it. Enough to say it didn't take long at all.

With the rod being 1/16" smaller than the holes, the children are capable of easily taking the items on and off the rod. The rod is high enough not to take an eye out, but low enough that the 3 year olds can all reach well enough to get the items on and off.

We used found lids, but I also added in:

• Mustard bottle
• Ball pit balls
• Mega blocks
• Bottle nipple caps
• Plastic cups and plates 
• Used bubble bottle

I'm now on the look out for any type of lid or container with an interesting shape or color. We have enough to do another one, and I plan on having 3 in the garden once the garden is set up properly. Since this is an interactive children's garden, they can freely take the totems apart and put them back together in an endless variety of compositions. 

My client, Jen, who has been my secondary source of lids and is amazingly creative and smart, was the one who mentioned leaving some of the drink lids un-drilled and using the straw holes instead so that they would sit off-set. We did that. They fit on the rod perfectly. The children mentioned that it looks like a flower where we did those. It adds a great additional dimension to the totem.

The children LOVE this activity. Of course, it's new, but since it will end up different every single time they play with it, I think it will end up being a great addition to our outdoor play space. They like taking them off just as much as putting them on.

SKILLS:

• Fine motor
• Gross motor
• Artistic expression
• Geometry
• Spatial relations
• Symmetry

 Tags: outdoor, play, playground, garden, preschool, pre-k, child, care, daycare, gardening, art, craft, totem, plastic, lid, lids, sculpture, artistic, create, fine motor, skills, child, children,