Planting With Kids Round Up

(If you are looking for our regular "What Would You Do With It? Wednesday post- we are a little off schedule this month as we have opted to participate in this great planting linky! We'll be back on track the first week of May!)

I am so excited to be co-hosting  this lovely BLOG HOP with The Usual Mayhem to get me energized and thinking spring! Yesterday, I shared with you an update on our sprouts this year. Today- I am going to share a round up of our gardening activities that we have posted about over the years.... and tomorrow- I'll share some of our outdoor garden art!

Last year was the first time we tried a square foot garden. Our harvest was AMAZING! We are very excited to be gardening this way again this year!

How Does Your Garden Grow?
Square Foot Garden Update

Here you can see how we set up our 4' x 10' square foot gardens:

We mixed the dirt for our square foot gardens with some water and our feet!

A couple of years ago, the birds helped us to plant some sunflowers out front - 

and last year, we grew some massive mammoth sunflowers- they were over 16 feet tall!!!!

The Birds Planted Sunflowers for us!

We planted grass in egg carton chunks to "make" caterpillars

We Made Our Own Mini Greenhouses with Plastic Baggies

After the seeds began to sprout- we transplanted them into pots- our observations and discussions lead to a child created full body enactment of the parts of the plant.

An update on our sprouts!

We spend a lot of time gardening and tending to our sprouts- however it tends to be messy business and I am not always the best at having the camera ready when my hands are dirty! Here are a few gardening tips I have for you if you are going to plant with children:

• Gardening is Messy - GET OVER IT! - children will have a great time getting messy with the dirt and mud. If can control some of the mess by providing small amounts of materials at a time and giving children smaller tools to work with. Gardening is a fantastic multi-sensory experience!

• Children will water, and water, and water, and water, and water- So spray bottles work great for watering indoor sprouts. The amount of water that they are given at a time is smaller and the children get a great fine motor work out at the same time.

• There are many ways to start seeds. If you'd like the children to be able to observe the seed as it sprouts I recommend small plastic baggies, translucent sports cards holders, clear plastic gloves, or clear cd cases. 

• Anticipate having the separate and transplant a number of seeds. Children like to put many seeds into one place!

• From my experiences, children tend to try and enjoy more fruits and vegetables when they have been a part of the process. Engage them in all aspects of your garden!

and now.... It's time to HOP!  A blog hop is a linky that is hosted on various blogs at the same time. If you link up on any one of the blogs- your post will appear in the same list on all of the other blogs who add the blog hop code! All of the following blogs have opted to join in on our fun:

*   The Usual Mayhem   *   Child Central Station   *   Housing a Forest   *   Rainy Day Mum   *   Growing Green Fingered Kids   *   Nature and Play   *   Fantastic Fun and Learning   *   Kitchen Counter Chronicles   *   Teach Preschool   *   The Educators' Spin On It   *   Kindergarten and Preschool for Parents and Teachers   *   The Fairy and the Frog   *   Let The Children Play   *   Little Illuminations   *   Early Play Outdoors   *   52 Days to Explore   *   Music Sparks   *   Milk and Cuddles   *   Teach Beside Me   *   The Pleasantest Thing   *   Making Boys Men   *   I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here   *

You can join us too! Please feel free to link up any posts new or old that relate to planting or gardening with children. The posts may be directly about gardening or involve garden art, crafts, or learning activity. 

AND... If you'd like, 
you can Grab Our Button 
to Add to the Post too! 

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Have fun hopping and linking up!