Whole Child Development
While studying seeds, plants and flowers, I love to take a field trip to a beautiful garden. Unfortunately, my plans to do so recently were vetoed by weather reports for a thunder storm. So instead, we visited a beautiful greenhouse we’re lucky to have nearby.
I had my favorite gardening help recently….all my boys! We got two dozen seed cups started to transplant to our garden in a few weeks. I love doing this activity with them, not just for the extra “help” (said help also insisted on labeling our Zinnias as Venus Fly Traps), but also for the opportunity for them to learn a bit about science and a bit about patience all at once. Plus, I can’t deny my boys an opportunity to bury their fingers in mud!
Here’s a quick one I’m quite sure you can take and improve on! For your flower theme, create an interactive bulletin board or flannel board activity by creating flower centers with the written numeral and corresponding number of dots. Then provide flower petals for the children to count out and place around the center, matching the dots in a one-to-one ratio. This activity supports preschool math skills like numeral recognition, counting, color recognition, and even patterning if they choose to use it that way!
Here’s a quick sensory table idea for your unit on plants, seeds, flowers, or gardens. Fill your sensory bin with soil – either right out of the bag, or right out of the ground. Add some pansy pony packs, hand tools, magnifiers, a few small containers with water, gloves, and even worms if you’re feeling extra organic! Let the children plant the flowers in the bin, examining the roots as they go. If they want to pull the flowers apart, examining their parts, that’s OK too!
I just wanted to share some photos from the experiment we did after reading The Empty Pot (details on the experiment here). I used pea seeds since they’re nice and large…..and because I already had them on hand, seeing as how I’m way behind on actually getting them in the ground. Here’s the difference between the two samples after about a week’s time.
Planting a Rainbow is one of my many favorites by Lois Ehlert. Her illustrations are striking and her text is simplistic yet descriptive. Planting a Rainbow follows the story of a mother and child as they plant a rainbow of colors in their garden. It follows the process of planting bulbs, seeds, and seedlings, and tending them as they grow, and grow, and grow. Finally they can gather a rainbow bouquet, knowing they can grow another rainbow the following year!
If you’re exploring seeds, plants, and flowers with your preschoolers this spring, it’s always great to get out and discover some applications within that theme on a field trip! Field trips don’t have to be elaborate. Most often, I would say that knowing that the host can connect with your children and offer them hands-on opportunities at their level is worth far more than an extravagant locale. Finding everyday, familiar places and then exploring them in-depth, allows the children to make more connections with their previous knowledge, and helps them to reconnect that knowledge again as they visit in the future. Here are some field trip ideas within the garden theme.
In spite of the fact that Winter keeps shoving her snowy foot in the door around here, it is actually spring- even if only according to the calendar. If I had to pick just one theme to study with children in the spring time, I think it would be seeds, plants, flowers, and gardens. (OK, that didn’t really sound like just one theme, but they’re all interconnected, so I’ll let it go.)
Dramatic play is a fantastic way for preschoolers to really synthesize the information they’ve been gathering throughout their experience with a theme or unit. They naturally use new vocabulary words, implement concepts, and contemplate new ideas all in a meaningful way. Here are a few ideas for dramatic play themes within a seeds, plants, garden, or flowers unit.
Content Copyrighted (2008-2025), Amanda Morgan, All Rights Reserved
