Gardening

Books

🌿🌻Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Another simple book with simple texts, we are guided through a flower garden from planting of fall bulbs to picking of a whole rainbow of summer flowers. Help children name all the plants for each color!

🌿🌻Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
This simple book follows a garden from planting to harvest– and then to soup! Name all the vegetables and tools or stick to the simple text for an easy read for young children.

🌿🌻Mrs. Peanuckle’s Flower Alphabet by Mrs. Peanuckle (illustrated by Jessie Ford)
This board book shares facts about 26 different flowering plants. The artwork is beautiful and the text is quirky but large.

🌿🌻Mrs. Peanuckle’s Vegetable Alphabet by Mrs. Peanuckle (illustrated by Jessie Ford)
This board book describes dedible plants from A to Z, including Dandelions and Fiddleheads. It also includes concepts essential to gardening, such as Queen bees and Underground.

🌿🌻In the Garden with Van Gogh by Julie Merberg
This short board book takes readers on a stroll through various gardens introducing children to paintings Van Gogh did of flowers, fields, farmers, and families in the garden. This book has descriptive and poetic wordflow and names the works themselves only at the end.

🌿🌻Little Naturalists: George Washington Carver Loved Plants by Kate Coombs (illustrated by Seth Lucas)
This illustrated board book tells the story of George Washington Carver, a passionate agricultural scientist who promoted the rotational planting of peanut crops to fertilize (and revitalize) tired soil.

🌿The Garden Next Door by Collin Pine (illustrated by Tiffany Everett)
This wonderful 2022 book comments on barren grassy neighborhood monocultures and explores the diversity of wildlife living just next door in a neighbor’s carefully planned wildflower garden. This book adds great racial diversity to a library as well, as all the characters depicted seem to be PoC. With a heavy focus on diverse native plants and bugs, I’m looking forward to more good things from Collin Pine in the future!

🌿Plant a Pocket of Prairie by Phyllis Root (illustrated by Betsy Bowen)
Easy reading at two sentences per page, this cute book describes the different types of native wildlife that utilize each type of prairie plant you might plant in your yard.  At the back of the book there is more information about prairie restoration efforts that support native bugs and birds, plus several more pages of more detailed information about native prairie animals.  Phyllis Root lives in Minnesota and has written quite a few books about people and nature.

🌿Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt – Kate Messner (illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal)
This lovely book alternately describes the full year of gardening, from spring planning to winter dormancy, and also the ecosystem of bugs, birds, snakes, and mammals that make their lives or their meals in a garden.

🌿Amara’s Farm by JaNay Brown-Wood (illustrated by Samara Hardy)
Amara needs a pumpkin for an autumn potluck. She explores a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that share some characteristics of the pumpkins she’s looking for. Our main character and her family are PoC, as well. The author lives in California, where many more of the plants featured can grow readily.

🌿Bloom Boom! by April Pulley Sayre
Vivid photo illustrations and rhythmic verses showcase striking floral landscapes and earthy closeups. Sayre guides us in simple text through the growth and bloom of spring flowers. Explore the trees, bulbs, and wildflowers of deserts, forests, fields, and gardens.

🌿Secrets of the Vegetable Garden by Carron Brown (illustrated by Giardano Poloni)
This book isn’t entirely tech-dependent, but without a flashlight you will need bright sunlight to see the shadow images. That said, the book works just as well on a cloudy day once you turn the page. This book covers garden insects, garden maintenance, and the most essential elements that plants need to grow.

🌿Rosa’s Big Sunflower Experiment by Jessica Spanyol
Rosa and friends plant sunflowers, harvesting seeds form a sunflower head and setting the individual planters in different areas to grow. As they observe, measure, and record the growth of their plants, they notice that different conditions affect how the sunflowers grow. Learn gardening vocabulary like “germinate” and “roots” while learning about the needs of plants.

Creative Art Opportunities

🌻Painting on green or brown paper
🌻Collages with seeds
🌻Dot art flowers
🌻Painting with whole carrots (tops and all)
🌻Painting with real mud
🌻Collage with dry soil
🌻Painting with ripe blueberries and raspberries
🌻Painting with pureed squash, carrot, or red cabbage

Hands On Experiences

⛅️Sprouting an onion in water (avoid near cats and dogs)
⛅️Whole carrots (with tops) in a tall clear glass of water
⛅️Sprouting an old potato (Safety tip: Green/sprouting potatoes are poisonous, producing the toxin solanine)
⛅️Tasting a sour lemon or lime
⛅️Exploration of whole large fruits and vegetables–For young toddlers and infants, try pineapple, acorn squash, melon, onion, oranges, lemons, and/or carrots
⛅️Planting green beans seeds in a clear bag with a wet paper towel in the window
⛅️Dry lentils in sensory bin
⛅️Corn kernels in sensory bin
⛅️Fruit & Vegetable toys
⛅️Planting an herb garden in soil (basil sprouts in 5-7 days!)
🌿 Digging in soil outdoors
🌿 Begin preparing a garden plot that can be planted now or in a few weeks

Songs to Learn and Sing

“Oats and Beans and Barley Grow“ – A folk song of which where are many versions

Oats and beans and barley grow.
Oats and beans and barley grow.
Do you or I or anyone know
How oats and beans and barley grow?

First the farmer plants the seeds
Stands up tall and takes his ease
Stamps his feet and claps his hands
And turns around to view his lands
[Chorus]

Next the farmer waters the seeds
Stands up tall and takes his ease
Stamps his feet and claps his hands
And turns around to view his lands
[Chorus]

Then the farmer hoes the weeds
Stands up tall and takes his ease
Stamps his feet and claps his hands
And turns around to view his lands
[Chorus]

Last the farmer harvests the seeds
Stands up tall and takes his ease
Stamps his feet and claps his hands
And turns around to view his lands
[Chorus]

“Garden Song” – American folk song written by David Mallet, which has been sung by many artists.

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
‘Till the rain comes tumbling down

Pulling weeds and picking stones
Man is made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
‘Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land

Plant your rows, straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her loving care
An old crow watching hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
In my garden I’m as free as that feathered thief up there.

“Country Garden“ – English folk song of which there are many versions

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know, those we miss you’ll surely pardon:
Daffodils, hearts’ ease, and flox,
Meadowsweet and lady’s smocks,
Gentle lupine, and high hollyhocks,
Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots
In an English country garden.

How many insects come here and go in an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know, those we miss you’ll surely pardon:
Fireflies, moths, gnats, and bees
Spiders climbing in the trees
Butterflies drift on the gentle breeze
There are snakes, ants that sting, and other creeping things
In an English country garden.

How many song birds fly to and fro in an English country garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know, those we miss you’ll surely pardon:
Bobolinks, cuckoo, and quail,
Tanager and cardinal,
Bluebird, lark, thrush, and nightingale.
There is joy in the spring when the birds begin to sing
In an English country garden.

“A Minnesota Garden” – An adaptation of the Country Gardens folk song (above) written by me to accommodate native midwestern wildflowers, bugs, and birds (if you can forgive my loose adherence to rhyme scheme)

How many kinds of wildflowers grow in a Minnesota garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know–those we miss you’ll surely pardon:
Thistle, milkweed, honeysuckle
Allium and sunflower
black-eyed Susans and coneflowers,
Violets, oxe-eyes, clover
And ladyslipper
In a Minnesota garden

How many bugs will come here and go in a Minnesota garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know–those we miss you’ll surely pardon:
Fireflies, moths, gnats, and bees,
Spiders climbing in the trees,
Butterflies drift on a gentle breeze.
There are slugs, millipedes, and other creeping things
In a Minnesota garden

How many wild birds fly to and fro in a Minnesota garden?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know–those we miss you’ll surely pardon:
Robin, wren, and oriole,
Mourning dove and cardinal,
Bluebird, bluejay, and cawing crow
There is joy in the spring when the birds begin to sing
In a Minnesota garden

“White Coral Bells ” – American folk song, also sung by Laurie Berkner

White coral bells, upon a silver stalk
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk
Oh, don’t you wish that you could hear them ring?
That will only happen when the fairies sing.

NIYN – Gardens on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.