Veggies and Gardening Preschool

I love to garden. Love it. I'm going to blame (thank) my dad for that. He is a passionate gardener and I have vivid memories of summer mornings spent out in the garden pulling up rocks (10 cents per 5 gallon bucket. Ugh. We hated that injustice. :) But I learned to love having my hands dirty and cultivating something til fruition. All kinds of wonderful lessons there. 

We have a modest family garden and our kids enjoy helping us with that. Of course, at their ages they are not yet doing the 'hard' work of the garden, but we are hoping to start them loving gardening and self-sufficiency early. I was really excited to do this week of science-y seeds, veggies, and gardening with Caroline!

I LOVE this free printable! It is perfect for this time of year when Caroline is pretty strong on recognition of letters but needs practice on the sounds they produce. This is a beginning sounds veggie clip sheet with upper case letters on one side and lower case letters on the other. You could alternatively cut out each card to make clip cards, but we opted for easy here. Those candies are "carrots":) free printable from Pinay Homeschooler

pumpkin life cycle word trace printable

I happened to have these wonky shaped pipe cleaners that were PERFECT little carrots! Caroline rolled the die and harvested that many carrots. Then she did it again and replanted. We harvested and planted repeatedly bc she really loved this activity! idea for pipe cleaner carrots from Sorting Sprinkles.

Books we read:

Rah Rah Radishes

Creepy Carrots (which the girls really thought was hilarious. They quote it now and bust up laughing every time. Kid humor is hilarious. I thought it was cute but didn't realize it was THAT funny!)

For our Veggie/Gardening book club: 

Books: 

The Carrot Seed

Carrot Soup

Tops and Bottoms

After The Carrot Seed we sang "This is they way we plant the seed" (...so early in the morning) with all kinds of carrot-appropriate verses that we made up on the fly!

-plant the seed

-water the seed

-sun shines down

-pull the weeds

-patiently wait

-harvest the carrots

-wash the carrots

-peel the carrots

-eat the carrots!

After reading Carrot Soup we did wheelbarrow races which the kids thoroughly enjoyed!

After Tops and Bottoms we shared our favorite vegetable and named whether it was a top, bottom, or middle. 

I was originally going to do some carrot art with mud paint with 2 equally awesome options:

real mud plus glue:

mud-copycat paint: 

I still think both those ideas are great and would like to do them in the future. 

But when I got RSVPs back for over 16 kids, I decided I didn't want to do a messy art project at our kitchen table. So instead we planted seeds in wet paper towels that the kids could take home and watch grow in a window. 

 look at those 'octopus' roots!

It is so fun to have Caroline checking on the progress of her seed every day, multiple times a day!

Our snack was, naturally, raw veggies with ranch. We sampled carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, sweet peppers, snap peas, garden-grown baby spinach, and even an avocado. The kids loved tasting a garden! :)

and unrelated to preschool or book club, but relating to gardens... here is a pic of our seeds coming up! the girls helped plant all of this before we put up the bunny fence.

 Sweet Candy onions

Amethyst beans (they are deep purple!)

our dwarf lemon tree is happy to be outside after a bleak winter!

Do you garden with your kids?