Tuesday

Garden Unit Part 1

I recently started web graphing out my homeschooling themes for the month. For example, I have April at the top and then underneath it I list everything I want to cover in April. e.g. gardening, seeds, plants, rain, etc. Then I use my Theme Planning Form to help me know what I want to accomplish for those particular themes. This is helping me accomplish more in our theme units. If you want to download my Theme Planning Forms, go here and here.

To start off our Gardening Unit we planted wildflower seeds in cute tins to give to Grandma and Mimi for Mother's Day (although we might have to do a plan B since one of the tins isn't growing anything!) If all else fails, I can buy some pre-grown flowers and the kids can plant those! :) We are keeping a seed journal (I shrank my journal pages to fit if you want to use the cover--(here's the cover for it) to record what actually is growing.

Also, the kids practiced adding and subtracting with their bean seeds.


We will also plan to take a survey to see which vegetables people like best. We've also been utilizing this Garden Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations. Plus, when we signed up for The Homeschool Village's Garden Challenge we got her bonus pack! There are some adorable pages in here!

Of course, we talked about how a plant "drinks" water and I used a celery stalk set in water with food coloring to show how the water travels to the top of the plant. This works a lot faster than doing it with a carnation as we previously did. It worked overnight. :)

If spring ever shows up around here we will use our Identifying Spring sheet and my son will put it on a clipboard to take it outside to write down spring-related words (or draw a picture if he can't write out the word.) Sadly, we haven't been able to use it because it is still not warm around here! We just got snow today, actually.

Another idea was from my student teaching days in South Carolina. My cooperating teacher had so many good ideas and this was one of them. She had the parents write on a paper entitled, "If You Were a Flower, I'd Pick You" and then they wrote about what was special to them about their child. It's such a nice keepsake. I've given you a link if you want to do one too!

I also came up with a song about plants to the tune of "The Ants Go Marching" called "The Plants are Growing One by One." 

For a simple, yet adorable craft, check out this website.

And for one more activity, we read an Easter book and then talked about what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story and then wrote it on our Story Sequencing Tulips.


I hope this gives you some ideas if you want to do a Garden Unit with your children too. Please share your favorite ideas or links that you are using. I'd love to check them out. :) As we get more into our Garden Unit I'll be sure to post more ideas!

2 comments:

Dr. Mom Online said...

Remember that time you and I talked about how 'inferior' we feel when we read *other* home schooling families' websites and see what *they're* doing???? Yeah, well... I'm gonna' go have a pity party now. Thanks, Becky.

(hee hee! Juuuuust kidding! This is AWESOME! So concise and organized. Love it! Thanks so much for sharing!!)

becky@purposefulhomemaking.com said...

Don't feel too bad...it doesn't happen all the time! :)

Thanks! Hope you can use some of the stuff! I just finished the plant song sequence cards today! :)

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