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Watch an age-appropriate video on the basics of gardening. Follow up with a discussion on what plants need to grow and how gardening can be rewarding and beneficial to the environment.

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Engage students with an online interactive game that covers gardening basics, such as soil types, watering schedules, and sunlight requirements.

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With gardening come routine jobs that are fun at first, but they might get a bit boring with time.

Your challenge as head gardener is to keep that interest level high with a combination of education, games, and contests. Gardening games for kids can help achieve all three of these goals.

Here are 17 gardening games for kids to enjoy that can up the gardening fun factor.

1. Gardening Games For Kids: Flower Rangers

Gardeners define a weed as any plant in the wrong place. Roses can be weeds if they are invading your watermelon patch. Weeds are bad because they steal nutrients that our flowers and veggies need.

Show the children how to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. Set up an adversarial relationship with weeds. They are "invaders" and must be eradicated. As the Flower Rangers, your kids must eliminate these evil enemy forces. (Oh, heck, let them wear costumes if they like.)

2. Weed Whackers:

Start a contest: Who can pull the most weeds each week. The winner gets to pick a movie to see. And the reward for a morning of weeding? A rain dance in the sprinkler!

3. Rain, Rain, Come and Play:

Kids like to water. Buy a watering wand or a nozzle with several settings. Show the kids how to set it on a shower setting so that you don't wash the plants away with a powerful jet of water. You can also buy hose heads of different shapes to spray the lawn or flowerbed.

This is also a good opportunity for lessons about runoff. Let the kids water for five minutes. Dig down a couple of inches and show them how the soil is still dry underneath. Explain that if you don't water often, the topsoil creates an impermeable barrier and sheds the water.

4. Snail Races:

Set a timer and see who can collect the most snails (or slugs) in 10 minutes. This is a good game for dusk when the little slimy creatures come out for a snack. Or you could make it even more fun and do it by flashlight.

5. The Grateful Deadheads:

To keep annuals blooming, you have to cut or snap off spent blossoms. This is a very fun task for kids.

6. Aphids Away!

Aphids are those little black, green, or white bugs that swarm your prize roses and leave nothing in their wake. The best way to get rid of these little pests is just to wash them away! Turn the nozzle of your hose on "jet" and take aim! The first kid with an aphid-free rosebush wins!

7. Earwig Booby Trap:

Leave a damp newspaper rolled up in the garden. Earwigs crawl in. You throw it away.

8. Snail Stomp:

'Nuff said. This of all the gardening games for kids is not for the squeamish.

9. Snail Trap:

Put a board about an inch off the ground. Snails will crawl under it for shelter. See who can trap the most.

10. Tulip Garden:

Plant bulbs in a pattern that spells out your kid's name or initials. For best results, plant on a hillside or in an area that can be viewed from above, such as a second-story window.

11. Teepee Garden:

Arrange three poles in a teepee shape and plant fast-growing vines such as nasturtiums or morning glories at the bottom. In a couple of months, she'll have a leafy tent.

12. Sunflower Clubhouse:

In a sunny spot, plant an outline of rows of sunflower seeds in a shape about 5-by-5-feet square. (Leave open space on one side for the "door.") You can even plant baby's tears inside to form a "carpet."

13. Frozen Flowers:

Harvest edible flowers and freeze them in ice cubes for conversation "ice breakers" at your next party.

14. Goofy Gourds:

Growing gourds can be a lot of fun if you have a long growing season (at least 120 days of sun). After the gourds dry out, you can carve them, make birdhouses out of them, or even paint faces on them.

15 Personalized Pumpkins:

Plant pumpkins and when they are about the size of a baseball, help your child write his name on one. Then take a paper clip and punch shallow holes along the name.

When the pumpkin is ready to harvest, you'll know whose is whose. The name will be visible in a hue lighter than the pumpkin skin.

16 Cucumber Bottles:

This is a little wacky but fun. Plant cucumber seeds. When the cucumbers are about an inch long, slide one at the bottom into a plastic bottle. (Keep it shaded or else it will cook).

When the little cucumber grows up, take it off the vine, bottle and all. You'll have the horticultural equivalent of the ship in the bottle.

17 Seed Savers:

At the end of the summer, let the kids go around collecting seeds from spent flowers and vegetables. Help them put labels with the seeds and dry them. Then put the seeds in paper (not plastic) bags and label the bags.

Next summer, they have their own stash of seeds to plant and more gardening games for kids to play! You could also talk to them about the different kinds of seeds and discuss why some are shaped differently. Who knew gardening games for kids could be so much fun?!

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With gardening comes routine jobs that are fun at first, but might get a bit boring for kids. These 17 gardening games for kids can help.

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Use a map of North Carolina to discuss different regions and how the climate and soil vary. This will help students understand where certain plants thrive in the state.

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Guide students in using Magna-Tiles to build a mini greenhouse model. Discuss how greenhouses work and their importance in gardening.

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Use LEGOs to create models representing different stages of a plant's life cycle, from seed to flowering. This visual aid will help students grasp the concept of growth and development in plants.

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Utilize computer resources to allow students to play a gardening simulation game, where they can manage their garden by planting, watering, and harvesting virtual crops.

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About This Game

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.

Fresh vegetables, healthy fruits and beautiful flowers - now you have the chance to take care of your own allotment and harvest the crops. Boredom at home is a thing of the past - today you'll enjoy nature. Cultivate your own virtual garden, take care of the plants, then harvest and sell them.

With Garden Simulator you'll get your own patch of land, place decorational elements, and nurture the plants, before you harvest them. The richer your yield, the more you can sell and the more money you can spend to enhance your piece of paradise. With countless unlockable features and additional content, your green thumb will be challenged to the max!

Lawnmower, watering can and seedlings are waiting for you - get ready for a beautiful and relaxing time in nature. And don't forget: Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade.

PLANT a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and decorate your garden with a colorful array of flowers.

CARE for your plants, OBSERVE the growth stages and HARVEST the fruits. Whether it's strawberries, lettuce or different types of flowers - the variety of plants makes your garden unique.

DESIGN your garden as you please! Place your flowers and vegetable beds and frame them with different fence elements. Hedges, furniture and many different items in numerous designs will turn your piece of land into a unique vacation spot.

KEEP your garden CLEAN! Not only at the beginning will you find trash in your garden that needs to be removed, but also during the game your efforts to keep it clean will be rewarded! Mow your lawn and turn your property into a gardener's dream.

EARN money and spend it! The more fruits and flowers you sell, the more money you have available to invest in better tools, new plant varieties and more.

HAVE FUN and experiment with realistic physics! Throw the design items around, place them as you like, build towers of fences or hedges, and do lots of crazy things you probably wouldn't do in a "real" garden. There are almost no limits to your imagination.

Garden Simulator ©2023 Toplitz Productions GmbH. Published by SunDust. SunDust is a label of Toplitz Productions. Developed by PRODUKTIVKELLER Studios UG. All rights reserved.

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PLANT - DESIGN - HARVEST - With Garden Simulator you'll get your own allotment, place deco elements and cultivate plants to harvest and sell them. Get ready for a beautiful time in nature. Always remember: A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul.

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Create a visual presentation of plants native to North Carolina, focusing on their benefits and how they attract pollinators.

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Lead a class project to build a simple pollinator hotel using recycled materials. This will raise awareness about the importance of pollinators and how to support them.

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Organize a scavenger hunt for students to identify different types of pollinators in pictures or descriptions. This can be done in the classroom or as a homework assignment.

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Use an online interactive simulation to teach students how pollination works and the roles different pollinators play in the ecosystem.

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Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix

Lesson Plan

Honey Bees: A Pollination Simulation

Purpose

Students identify the parts of a honey bee, the stages of its life cycle, and its role in pollination. Grades 3-5

Materials Needed
Engage:

The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner
Activity 1: Bee Anatomy

Preserved or mounted honey bee, 1 per group (If your school does not have a mounted insect collection, preserved honey bees can be found online at school and science specialty stores. Honey bees found dead outside or in window sills can also be used. If a preserved honey bee cannot be obtained, project the honey bee image from the Honey BeePowerPoint.)

Hand lenses, 1 per group

Honey Bee PowerPoint Slides

Anatomy of a Worker Bee activity sheets, 1 per student

Anatomy of a Worker Bee Answer Key

Activity 2: Pollination Simulation

Construction paper

Black chenille stems, 2 per worker bee headband

8 containers of 100 mini (5mm) pompoms* (different colors)

8 small containers* of water

16 medium-sized (1") pompoms*

16 jewel bags (1.5" x 2") with yarn tied as a necklace*

16 drinking straws*

Construction paper, 25 pieces

How Do Bees Make Honey?

*These items are included in the Pollination Simulation Kit, which is available for purchase from agclassroomstore.com.
Activity 3: Beeswax Life Cycle Models

Honey Bee PowerPoint

Beeswax Modeling Clay Recipe

6 cups beeswax pellets* (available at craft stores)

6 tablespoons coconut oil*

4 tablespoons lanolin* (available at pharmacies)

Slow cooker

Slow cooker plastic liner

2-ounce plastic mini condiment cups with lids,* 1 per student or group

Cardstock or construction paper

Honeycomb, optional

*These items are included in the Beeswax Modeling Clay Kit, which is available for purchase from agclassroomstore.com.

Vocabulary

beeswax: a substance secreted from glands located on the underside of a worker bee's abdomen

brood: the offspring produced by the colony (eggs and larvae)

cell: a hexagonal wax chamber built from beeswax for brood rearing and storage of honey and pollen

colony: a group living together

hive: a home to a colony of bees

honeycomb: six-sided wax cells in a beehive

metamorphosis: the process of change in the form and habits of an organism during transformation from an immature stage to an adult stage

nectar: a sweet liquid secreted by flowers

pollen: the fine, powder-like material produced by the anthers of flowering plants

pollination: the transfer of pollen from the anther to the stigma of a plant; the spreading of pollen by insects, birds, bats, and the wind between flowering plants

propolis: a resin-like material used by bees to construct and seal parts of the beehive

royal jelly: a milky, yellow syrup secreted from a gland in a young worker bee's head; used to feed larvae

Did You Know?

Bees pollinate 95 different crops, helping to create nearly one-third of the world's food supply.

Honey is the only food produced by insects that is eaten by humans on a wide scale.

A queen bee can lay over one million eggs in her lifetime.

Worker bees' wings can beat 250 times per second allowing the bee to fly at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour.

Background Agricultural Connections

Honey bees are extremely important to humans. Bees are pollinators. They collect pollen and nectar from flowering trees and plants and transfer pollen from flower to flower. Bees pollinate 95 different crops, helping to create nearly one-third of the world's food supply. Honey bees use the nectar they gather from flowers to make honey, which is the only commercial food produced by insects that is eaten by humans on a wide scale. Honey bees also produce beeswax, which is used to make candles, artists' materials, lubricants, polishes, and cosmetics. Bee venom, pollen, royal jelly, and propolis are other bee-made products used in manufacturing, and for nutritional and medical purposes.

Honey bees live in large groups called colonies. There are three types, or castes, of honey bees-queen, worker, and drone.

The queen bee is a female that lays eggs. Each colony has only one queen bee. The queen can live up to four years and can lay over one million eggs in her lifetime. She can lay close to one egg per minute and between 1,000-2,000 eggs a day.

Worker bees are female bees who perform many of the jobs for the colony, including feeding the larvae; cleaning the hive; creating wax and using it to make new cells; grooming and feeding the queen; guarding and protecting the hive; and leaving the hive to collect pollen, nectar, and water. Worker bees live for about six weeks in the summer and longer in the winter months when they are less active.

Drones are male bees responsible only for mating with the queen. They do not work. There are about 100 drones in each colony. They live for about eight weeks in the summer, and are then expelled from the colony and die in the fall.

The size of a honey bee's body depends on its caste and the task it performs. The queen bee is the largest, and the worker bee is the smallest. Honey bees, like all insects, have three main body regions-head, thorax, and abdomen.

The head contains two compound eyes, three simple eyes, two antennae, mandibles, and the proboscis. The compound eyes are made up of thousands of tiny lenses that allow the bee to see ultraviolet light (invisible to the human eye) and all colors of visible light except red. The simple eyes each have a thick lens that can sense changes in brightness. The honey bee's antennae are movable feelers that detect smells and movement. The proboscis is a straw-like tongue used to suck nectar or honey. Mandibles are jaw-like structures used to knead wax and to chew honey and pollen.

The thorax is the honey bee's middle region containing the flight muscles, four wings, and six legs. Honey bees have two hind wings and two forewings that can beat 250 times per second allowing the bee to fly at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour. They have three pairs of segmented legs used for walking, dusting their antennae, brushing pollen off body hairs, and storing pollen. The hind legs of worker bees contain a pollen basket -a collection of hairs where pollen is stored for transport.

The abdomen is the rear region that contains organs for digestion, reproduction, and respiration as well as the stinger and wax glands. The stinger is only found in female honey bees. A worker bee's barbed stinger is used for defense. When stinging, the barb anchors the stinger in the victim while the stinger's pouch pumps venom. After stinging, the bee dies of an abdominal rupture. When stinging insects, the bee's stinger remains attached while the barb tears through the target's exoskeleton. The honey sac is a stomach-like organ connected to the digestive tract. It is also known as the honey sack or honey stomach. The sac stores the nectar until the bee returns to the hive. Wax glands are located on the underside of the bee's abdomen. These glands form and excrete wax.

Honey bees have four distinct life stages-egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Complete metamorphosis takes between 16 and 24 days.

The queen lays each egg into a different cell of the honeycomb. It is her job to determine whether the egg will grow into a male or female bee. Fertilized eggs will become female workers, and unfertilized eggs will become male drones. After three days, the egg hatches and a worm-like creature, called larva, is unveiled. Worker bees feed the larva royal jelly-a milky, yellow syrup secreted from a gland in the worker bee's head. As it grows, the larva sheds its skin four to five times. On about day nine, the larva spins itself a cocoon. A worker bee seals the cocoon into the cell with wax.

Inside the cocoon, the larva transforms into a pupa-developing eyes, legs, and wings. When the bee is fully grown, it chews its way out of the cell and emerges as an adult. It takes 16 days for a queen bee to develop from an egg to an adult; worker bees take 18-22 days, and drones need 24 days.

Engage

1. Ask the students, "Why are honey bees important to humans?"

2. Read the folowing sections of The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner to discuss ways in which honey bees are important to humans:

We love honeybees, and we love honey (pp.10-11)

Why do we need pollination? (pp.20-21)

What would we do without bees? (pp.38-39)

Why do we need to help the bees? (pp.40-41)

3. Explain to the students that they will be learning more about honey bees and pollination in this lesson.

Explore and Explain
Activity 1: Bee Anatomy

1. Create groups of 4-5 students. Provide each group with hand lenses and preserved honey bees. Ask the students to examine the bees and, as a group, make a chart listing the details they observed. Provide time for each group to present their observations to the class.

2. Explain to the students that honey bees have three main body regions-the head, thorax, and abdomen. Use the Honey BeePowerPoint Slides to discuss the main parts of a worker bee.

3. Ask the students to label the parts of a worker bee on the Anatomy of a Worker Bee activity sheet.

Activity 2: Pollination Simulation

1. Using the background information as a guide, discuss the roles of each of the three castes of honey bees-the queen, workers, and drones.

2. Simulate the role worker bees play in pollination by conducting a pollination simulation. Choose 8 students to represent flowers, 16 students to represent worker bees, and 1 student to represent the queen bee. The number of flowers and worker bees may vary according to class size. Extra students can represent the worker bees and drones that remain in the hive.

3. Have the students create construction paper headbands to differentiate flowers, worker bees, and the queen bee. Draw and cut out flowers to glue onto the flower headbands. Create antennae using chenille stems to staple onto the worker bee headbands. Cut out a crown-shaped headband for the queen bee.

4. Choose a large area, preferably outdoors, to serve as the "garden" and a smaller area to the side of the garden to serve as the "beehive."

5. Each flower will hold one container of mini pompoms (a different color for each flower) to represent pollen and one container of water to represent nectar. The flowers will choose a location inside the garden in which to stand.

6. Each worker bee will carry one medium-sized pompom to represent the bee's hairy body, one jewel bag tied with yarn and worn as a necklace to represent the honey sac, and one straw to represent the proboscis.

7. The worker bees will begin at the beehive with the queen, drones, and other workers whose duties require them to work inside the hive. When the queen bee gives the command, the worker bees will leave the hive in search of nectar from flowers.

8. When a worker finds a flower, they will land their medium-sized pompom into the container of mini pompoms. The worker will then simulate gathering nectar with their proboscis by filling a straw with water using their finger to create a vacuum. The water will be deposited into the jewel bag. When the worker removes the medium-sized pompom from the container, the tiny pompoms will stick to the larger pompom much the same way pollen sticks to the hairs of a bee when it visits a flower.

9. After collecting nectar and pollen from the flower, the worker will find a new flower to visit. Here, the worker will brush off some of the pollen collected from the previous flower into the new flower's container. They will then collect more nectar and pollen before visiting another flower.

10. For the purpose of this simulation, the worker bee must collect nectar and pollen from each flower before visiting a flower for a second time, and only two bees may visit the same flower at once.

11. Once the worker bee has filled their honey sac with nectar, they will return to the hive.

12. Lead a discussion about what the students observed during the simulation. Did the flowers end with the same color of pollen they started with?

13. Ask the students, "How do the bees use the nectar to make honey?"

14. Show the video How Do Bees Make Honey? to find out how bees turn the nectar from flowers into honey and see how the flowers benefit from bees. Clarify that the honey sac can also be called the honey stomach, the term used in this video.

15. Trade roles and repeat the simulation as many times as desired.

Activity 3: Beeswax Life Cycle Models

1. Ask the students if humans use any items made by honey bees.

2. Talk about how honey bees make beeswax. Explain that beeswax is secreted from the wax glands of worker bees to create and cap cells inside the hive. Beeswax is used in the production of candles, cosmetics, artists' materials, electronics, lubricants, polishes, inks, and paints. Bees require the protein from pollen and the carbohydrates from honey to create beeswax. It takes 6-10 pounds of honey to make one pound of wax, which is enough to construct 35,000 cells within a hive. A beekeeper will harvest two pounds of wax cappings for every 100 pounds of honey.

3. If possible, obtain honeycomb so students can observe the wax cells and cappings. Honey in the comb can be obtained from beekeepers, specialty stores, online stores, and farmers markets.

4. Use the Honey Bee PowerPoint to discuss the life cycle of a honey bee.

5. View the Amazing Time-Lapse: Bees Hatch Before Your Eyes video to watch the growth of larvae into bees.

6. Use the Beeswax Modeling Clay Recipe to make beeswax modeling clay. Instruct the students to use the clay to create a honey bee life cycle model by creating an egg, larva, pupa, and adult honey bee. Refer to the Honey Bee PowerPoint for photographs of each life stage. Students can work in groups or individually to create their life cycle model.

7. A cell for each life stage can be created out of paper folded into the shape of a hexagon.

Elaborate

The Harvard Microrobotics Lab breaks down the mechanics of insect flight to create a biologically-inspired insect-scaled robot, shown in this two-minute video, Tiny, Robotic Bees Could Change the World.

Have the students use the instructions from the Draw a Bee video by the illustrator and author of The Bee Book, Charlotte Miner to draw a honey bee.

Evaluate

After conducting these activities, review and summarize the following key concepts:

Bees are important to humans because they pollinate crops that produce our food.

A colony of bees is very organized with specific workers for individual jobs.

There are four stages in the life cycle of a honey bee-egg, larva, pupa, and adult.

Honey bees use the nectar they gather from flowers to make honey.

Honey bees also produce beeswax.

Recommended Companion Resources

Organization

Utah Agriculture in the Classroom

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Agricultural Literacy

Education Content Standards

Common Core Connections

Education Content Standards

Science (SCIENCE)

3-LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

3-LS1-1 Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.

4-LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

4-LS1-1 Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.

4-LS1-2 Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.

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Debra Spielmaker, Administrator and Yasuko Mitsuoka Grow, Designer

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Students identify the parts of a honey bee, the stages of its life cycle, and its role in pollination. Grades 3-5