Gardening Activities for Kids

I have started volunteering at our local botanical garden, and it’s so fun to do activities with the kids and show them all the different things that grow there. Whether you’re gardening at home or at school, getting kids involved in planting and caring for flowers, plants and vegetables is a lot of fun for all involved.

If you don’t have easy access to land to garden, there are still plenty of garden activities you can try. Such as planting in eggshells, like in this project from Little Bins for Little Hands. This post goes into a lot of detail about seed germination and the different stages, and includes printable worksheets on the life cycle of a bean plant.

The plant science experiments from Lessons 4 Little Ones don’t require planting in the ground; cups are just fine. A couple of the experiments include testing which kind of water helps plants grow better, investigating whether plants need light and growing grass in cups with each child’s picture on them (so cute!). If your classroom has windows, you can also do the classic experiment of sprouting beans in plastic bag “greenhouses.”

Or make a greenhouse in a plastic cup with this idea from Mama Papa Bubba. You can also try regrowing lettuce from the core, as shown in this tutorial from The Educators’ Spin On It.

Start with plants instead of seeds and you can make a jar terrarium with this idea from Barley & Birch.

If you do have some outdoors space, check out these posts on the fastest sprouting seeds (You Should Grow), easy plants to grow from seed (Crafts on Sea) and the easiest vegetables to grow (Together Time Family).

If you’re doing anything gardening or plant related with kids of almost any age, you’ll want to check out the printable botany lessons from 123 Homeschool 4 Me. This collection includes of 80 pages of resources, from life cycle information to plant cards, fact sheets, experiments and more. This is not a free resource but it’s jam packed with goodness.

Having a garden journal is a fun way for kids to record what they plant in the garden and how it grows. This kids garden planner from Farm House By L on Etsy includes a garden checklist, diary and journal pages and a scavenger hunt for kids to do in the garden.

It’s the time of the year to start bringing a little Halloween fun into every lesson plan you can, so here are some ideas for witch themed math activities your kids are sure to love.

Practice symmetry skills with this witch hat counting game from Friends Art Lab. Kids can stick stickers of the same type on each side of the hat, then count how many total, how many of each type, etc. And you end up with a cute piece of art to boot.

Frugal Mom Eh has a number of witch themed worksheets including a connect the dots, label the witch and Halloween themed scattergories. But the one that caught my eye was the witch’s leg coloring page, which is a color by the answer to the math problem.

Nurtured Neurons has a cute witch counting came where you match the witch to the number of bubbles coming out of her cauldron. This one requires membership in their community but you might be able to get a free preview.

The witches brew on a ten frame activity from Miniature Masterminds is a cute one to work on one to one correspondence. Use little erasers or buttons if you want to reuse the cards, or add stickers to match the number on the card, which adds a fine motor skill component.

The Teacher Bag has a cute Halloween counting game kids can use to make their own potion in a little cauldron. You could make your own version with all the little Halloween themed bits you have handy, and either make a spinner like theirs or just write out some recipes and have kids go through the bigger cauldron to find all the ingredients they need. Then count them up! This post from Pocket of Preschool has a similar idea you can use with their printable or make your own with whatever items you have on hand.

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