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Choose a garden theme. Having a garden theme can help you and the children get excited about what you are growing and narrow down which plants to include. Talk with the children about what kind of garden they would like to create. Consider ideas such as a pizza garden (tomatoes, basil), rainbow garden (different types of colorful flowers), or salad garden (lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and cabbage).

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Choose a garden theme. Having a garden theme can help you and the children get excited about what you are growing and narrow down which plants to include. Talk with the children about what kind of garden they would like to create. Consider ideas such as a pizza garden (tomatoes, basil), rainbow garden (different types of colorful flowers), or salad garden (lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and cabbage).

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Watch Garden Storytimes Through the Seasons
Resources: Resources: Resources: Sponsors:
The GroMoreGood initiative makes garden grants, garden kits, educational curriculum, and garden training available to all Head Start programs with the goal of creating more edible gardens for young children and their families. The initiative also supports the creation of green space projects-land that is partly or completely covered with grass, trees, shrubs, or other vegetation-as an option for children and the community to learn.

Want even more? Check out our Gardening with Kids Basics course provided by The Academy.

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Watch Garden Storytimes Through the Seasons Fall Garden Storytime Resources: Book: The Pie That Molly Grew, by Sue Heavenrich The Pie that Molly Grew Activity Kit from the Author, Sue Heavenrich Singing Activity Activity: Pumpkin Learn and Play Activity: Connect the Dots Winter Garden Storytime Resources: Five Little Carrots - Music with Gina Five Little Carrots - Lyrics Downloadable activity kit...

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Spring is in the air! You may be thinking that this is the perfect time to start a garden with the children in your preschool or kindergarten class and asking yourself questions such as "What can the children learn through gardening?" and most importantly, "Where should I begin?"

From digging and planting to watering and weeding, gardening offers a variety of opportunities for hands-on exploration in a medium that many children enjoy-dirt! When young children plant a garden, they experience the satisfaction of seeing their care and nourishment result in a growing garden. As they follow their curiosity and implement their own ideas, the children will build confidence in themselves and discover what plants need to grow. Gardening with children is not only fun and engaging, it also supports the development of the whole child. Planning, planting, and tending to a growing garden requires a wide variety of skills from all domains of development and learning that are highlighted below.

Social-emotional: Gardening is a team effort. Children and adults work together to plan, plant, and care for a growing garden. The necessary teamwork helps children learn how gardens can build a sense of community and gain an understanding of how people care for one another.

Physical: Preparing the earth, digging holes, planting tiny seeds, weeding, and watering plants provide opportunities for children to develop both fine-and gross-motor skills. Crouching down to observe plants, carefully stepping over growing sprouts, and carrying and using tools promotes their balance and coordination.

Language and Literacy: Children develop language and literacy skills as they have rich conversations with their classmates to create garden plans and discuss how their plants grow over time. They interact with different kinds of text by listening to books about gardening and looking at plant names on seed packets and plant care cards. Children practice writing by creating plant markers and documenting the garden's growth.

Cognition: Gardening provides an abundance of sensory experiences for children: they can get their hands messy in the soil and gently touch the leaves of the growing plants, smell and taste fragrant herbs, and see the rainbow of colors that the plants and their blossoms create. These sensory experiences promote self-regulation and build children's interests and curiosities about gardening.

Mathematics: Planning and planting a garden give children opportunities to explore a variety of math concepts--measurement as they space out plants in a row, counting to determine how many plants are in the garden, simple addition and subtraction as they add or take away plants from the garden, and making comparisons as they document how plants grow and change over time.

A class garden can fit into many different environments. Consider the space you have in your classroom or outdoors. Do you have a protected area of soil? Do you have a sunny windowsill where you can place a few containers of plants? Or do you have an area where you can place raised garden bed? Once you have determined where your garden will go, it's time to start planning it with the children!

Choose a garden theme. Having a garden theme can help you and the children get excited about what you are growing and narrow down which plants to include. Talk with the children about what kind of garden they would like to create. Consider ideas such as a pizza garden (tomatoes, basil), rainbow garden (different types of colorful flowers), or salad garden (lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and cabbage).

Involve the school, your community, and families. Many people enjoy gardening as a hobby and may be excited to share their knowledge and experience with the children. Invite family, community, and school members to share advice about how to plant and care for a garden or donate materials for you and the children to use to care for your class garden.

Manage your expectations. Gardening is a new skill for children. They will likely plant seeds too closely together, pull up plants before they are ready, accidentally step on the plants, and overwater areas of the garden. These are all opportunities for the children to learn more about gardening and how to care for plants. When these things happen, encourage the children to notice the impact: "Look, all of the water is washing our seeds away. They aren't where we want them to be anymore." Help the children fix the problem: "Let's collect the seeds and put them back in the soil." Then ask them to think about how they can keep that problem from happening again: "What can we do differently next time so our seeds don't get washed away?"

Incorporate gardening into your weekly routines. Once your garden is planted, it will need to be regularly weeded and watered. Establish set times during the week when you and the children tend to the garden. This is also a great opportunity for children to notice and document any changes in the garden and problem-solve any issues such as wilting plants or pests in the garden.

Give children ownership of the garden. Create classroom jobs related to caring for the garden. You can include roles such as Waterer, Pest Inspector, Weed Puller, Plant Checker, and Harvester. Having ownership of the garden will build children's sense of responsibility for caring for the garden and encourage them to take pride in their accomplishments as the garden grows.

Celebrate growth and discovery. At the end of the growing season, celebrate the children's gardening efforts. Create a display that shows how the garden grew and how the children cared for it over time. Highlight the children's discoveries and invite them to share what they learned and what they enjoyed about gardening.

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What Can You Learn From a Garden? - Teaching Strategies

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How to Cultivate a Classroom Garden Spring is in the air! You may be thinking that this is the perfect time to start a garden with the children in your preschool or kindergarten class and asking yourself questions such as "What can the children learn through gardening?"

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Browsing seed racks, catalogs, and garden centers is one of the joys of gardening, especially in early spring as the new growing season awaits. Each seed packet and plant calls out to us, "Plant me! Plant me!" Selecting crops and varieties and creating planting plans surely rank near the top of the list when it comes to the joys of gardening.

However, it can also be daunting for gardeners - both new and experienced - to decide what to grow from among the many choices available at local nurseries and online. One website, for example, offers more than 600 varieties of tomato seeds!

Finding the Right Fit

For those with limited garden space or who are growing their vegetable gardens in containers, the choice of varieties is even more important to ensure the plants fit the space allotted to them.

Planting methods such as Square Foot Gardening provide detailed advice on how many plants of each crop will fit into a 1' square. This is particularly helpful for crops that are relatively uniform in size no matter the variety - for example, spring onions or beets. Squash, on the other hand, range widely in size. While some squash form tidy bushes, others, like Hubbard squashes, have vines reaching up to 12' long. A single Hubbard squash plant could easily overtake an entire garden!

Fortunately, plant hybridizers have worked diligently to take the best qualities of sprawling heirlooms and breed them into compact, space-saving varieties for home gardeners.

Read and Research Before Buying

If you're planting from seed, you'll have many more varieties to choose from, and seed packets often give the size of the plant at maturity. If you're purchasing plants, read the tags; if they don't list the size, be sure to research the variety before purchasing.

Look for words like "dwarf," "bush," and "patio" in the descriptions. Variety names can be clues, too, such as 'Tiny Tim' and 'Pixie'. Note, however, that names may refer to the size of the fruit rather than the overall size of the mature plant.

Compact Vegetable Varieties

Here is a brief list of compact vegetable plants suitable for small-space and container gardens. There are many, many more to choose from. If in doubt about what to grow, contact your local Master Gardeners or consult with a knowledgeable staff person at your local greenhouse.
Beans
Blue Lake Bush Beans: An all-time favorite variety that produces abundant, stringless green beans over a long season. Bush-shaped plants need no support. Space plants 10-12" apart.

Trionfo Violetto Pole Beans: Italian heirloom variety with slender, deep purple pods on 6-8' vines. Foliage has purple veins and stems and flowers are lavender; very ornamental plants. Provide sturdy support. Direct-sow seeds and thin plants to 6" apart.
Broccoli
Aspabroc broccolini: A hybrid of broccoli and Kai Lan (Chinese kale) developed in the early 1990s, it has asparagus-like stems topped with petite broccoli heads. Space plants 12" apart.

Small Miracle broccoli: Compact plants produce 6" heads followed by abundant side shoots. Space plants 12-18" apart.
Cabbage
Pixie: Early-maturing variety forms compact, 5" diameter heads with tightly packed, tender leaves with a delicate, sweet flavor. Space plants 10" apart.

Minuet Chinese cabbage: Upright, oblong heads have light green outer leaves and pale yellow, tightly packed inner leaves with a sweet flavor. Space plants 12" apart.
Cucumbers
Salad Bush: Compact plants produce 8" long slicing cucumbers. All-America Selections winner. Space plants 18-24" apart.

Spacemaster. Short vines make this variety ideal for containers or hanging baskets. Produces slender, 7-1/2" long slicing cucumbers. Space plants 18-24" apart.
Eggplant
Patio Baby: Each 16-20" tall plant produces clusters of 2-3" long, egg-shaped, purple-black fruits with a mild, sweet flavor. All-America Selections winner. Space plants 18" apart.

Fairy Tale: Beautiful, 4-5" long x 1" diameter lavender fruits are streaked with white. Dwarf plants grow 18-24" tall. All-America Selections winner. Space plants 12-16" apart.
Lettuce
Pomegranate Crunch: A mini red romaine lettuce with small, dense heads of tender, red-bronze leaves. Space plants 8-12" apart.

Tom Thumb: Butterhead variety with 5-7' heads with dark-green outer and creamy-white inner leaves. Space plants 8" apart.
Peas
Tom Thumb: This variety dates back to the 1850s. A true mini pea plant that grows to only 10", but produces full-sized pods. This is a shelling pea (pod is not edible). Direct-sow seeds 2" apart.

Sugar Ann: Abundant pods on 2' high vines; provide support to prevent toppling. This heirloom variety is a snap pea with thick, juicy, edible pods. Direct-sow seeds 2" apart.
Peppers
Confetti Sweet Pepper: Growing 18" tall with variegated green-and-white foliage, this variety produces petite peppers that start out green and ripen to fire-engine red. Space plants 12-16" apart.

Baby Belle: Abundant, 3-4" peppers are produced on 18" tall plants. Fruits have a sweet flavor and are perfect for snacking. Space plants 12-16" apart.
Summer Squash
Bush Baby: Produces an abundance of attractive striped zucchini that are best harvested when they are 2-6" long. Plants are compact and easy to grow. Space plants 18-24" apart.

Raven: Deep green, 7-8" long zucchinis form on bushy plants for an abundant harvest in less space. Meaty and flavorful raw or cooked. Hybrid. Space plants 18-24" apart.
Tomatoes
Patio: A "dwarf determinate" that produces small to medium-sized tomatoes on sturdy plants that grow just 24" high. Space plants 18-24" apart.

Husky Cherry Red: This "dwarf indeterminate" produces large clusters of 1" fruits over a long season on 48" high plants. Space plants 18-24" apart.

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Compact Vegetable Varieties for Small-Space Gardens

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For those with limited garden space or who are growing their vegetable gardens in containers, the choice of varieties is even more important to ensure the plants fit the space allotted to them.

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Garden markers are not only great for finding what you have planted, but can teach literacy outside of the classroom.

Check out more ideas Here!

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After your plants have bloomed, have children pick flowers, plants, produce. Talk about the different parts, allow children to dissect, smell, touch, taste if able.

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If you are limited on space, this is a great way to sprout seeds!