As they learn more and more about the world around them, it seems as though young children are always quite fascinated with the way things grow. The same holds true at the Children's Center. A seed found in our fresh fruit at lunchtime inevitably gets rinsed gently and carefully before being placed into a ziploc bag or tucked away into a pocket like a treasure for safekeeping. This summer in the Green Family, Student Teacher Tressa Holth was able to use this knowledge to develop a gardening unit that soon developed into an emergent curriculum about growing things. Tressa started small, first reading stories about gardening and talking about what grows in a garden. She introduced gardening tools and eventually planted a classroom garden of marigolds, peas, carrots and radishes. The children were quite excited to help in this process and took turns watering and measuring the small plants that emerged from the soil. The carrots and radishes were planted in a clear aquarium so that the children would be able to witness the action under the soil as well. The squiggly, fuzzy roots were especially interesting to see.
Though we learned that plants definitely need water to grow we also learned that there is such a thing as giving a plant too much water and our “garden” never really amounted to much. (The constant over watering did bring about a rather interesting infestation of gnats, which could have become a whole other curriculum altogether!) The entire unit was wrapped up quite nicely when the children were able to use donated flowers to help beautify our playground. We added soil and some beautiful flowers to the three large stone planters on our playground. The children worked very hard and were quite proud of their hard work! Some of the fun and exciting things we got to do (and the areas of learning covered) included:
Math:
Gathered weekly measurements of the plants in our classroom garden and discussing which ones were biggest and/or which ones grew the most since the week before. The children became familiar with using a ruler and yardstick.
Measured drawings of garden objects (vegetables, flowers, leaves, and insects) using inch worms that Tressa meticulously cut out and laminated. Again, we were able to talk about big and little, more and less, etc.
Played a flower pot matching game. The children were each given a flower that was numbered 1-10 and they took turns coming to the magnet board and placing their flowers into the correct pot (the one that had the corresponding number of dots).
Science:
Planted flowers and plants from both seeds and seedlings.
Discussed care for plants and how the needs of plants are similar to or different from the needs of humans.
Explored the insides of vegetables and fruits using all five senses.
Explored different types of seeds and how they are different and how they are alike.
We learned a little about the role of worms in a garden. We even added some worm rich soil to our garden and were delighted a number of weeks later to find most of the worms still alive!
Art:
Made a handprint flower garden. We practiced color recognition and discovered how many new and interesting colors we could make in the process.
We made tissue paper flowers. This was a great activity to hone listening skills, or ability to follow directions and promoted fine motor development.
Drew pictures of flowers and gardens.
Examined a seed, predicted and drew pictures of what we thought would grow from it.
Music/Movement:
Pantomimed growing from a seed to a tall tree.
Literacy:
Read many books about gardens, flowers, growing, etc.
Learned many new fingerplays and songs. Each was charted on a large poster board and we were able to take turns using the pointer to follow along with the words as we ‘read' them.
Created a chart of our favorite vegetables. We did this twice. Once before we had a vegetable tasting and once after we had tasted them. We compared the two charts when we were finished.
Social Studies:
Explored the neighborhood and part of campus as we went on many walks down to the coulee in search of interesting plant (and animal!) life.
We learned about what happens at a flower shop as we turned our dramatic play area into a ‘Garden Center.' This included silk flowers and plants, pots and vases, hats, gloves, floral catalogs, a cash register, money, real gardening tools and even a large plastic tub full of real dirt to play and ‘plant' in.
These are, of course, only a handful of the many experiences we shared this summer in the Green Family. It was such a fun and rewarding time for children and teachers alike!
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