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.

🌿The Wild Garden by Cynthia Cliff

🌿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
🌿Visit a local community garden or arboretum
🌿Visit a local garden center
🌿Take a neighborhood walk and observe home gardens in your community—see if you can spot any gardeners at work!

Songs to Learn and Sing

“Garden Song” – David Mallet
“Little Seed” – Elizabeth Mitchell
“White Coral Bells” – Laurie Berkner
“Rain & Thunder” – Golden Bough
“English Country Garden” – Jimmy Rogers
“Oats & Beans & Barley Grow” – Raffi
“Save the Daisies” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“I Love Tulips” – Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids
“Running Down the Hill” – Laurie Berkner
“Awesome Blossom” – Caspar Babypants
“Beans & Greens” – Nancy Raven
“This is My Garden” – Little Parade
“Apple Tree” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“Gonna Plant A Garden” – Madeline L Pots
“La La Lavender” – Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids
“Made to Bloom” – Stephanie Leavell
“Digging in the Dirt” – Frances England
“Mr. Mr. Rabbit” – David Norris
“Plant a Habitat” – Birdsong and the Eco-Wonders

NIYN – Gardens on Spotify
NIYN – Gardens on YouTube
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.