Plan and Plant a Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A family project to help children learn about responsibility and patience through planning, planting, and monitoring a garden. Among one of the most rewarding tasks is planting a garden. Whether it is a veggie garden, flower garden, water garden, or rock garden, planting seeds and seeing them through to fruition is a wondrous thing. What a great way to teach about responsibility, patience, and God's glory in action. Using the learning and activity sheets below help your learner choose, plan, plant, and chart the progress of a garden of their choice. Use any basic gardening book from your shelf or local library to complete the activities. We have also included some great kid friendly internet resource links to help you bring this project to life.* We hope you have lots of "fruitful" fun learning about God's Glory. ☺ *Note: Please preview all sites as websites and their content can sometimes change without notice. Please help us to keep this page user friendly by reporting any link that has become outdated. Thank you.

Project Overview Steps

Step 1:  Print out the Plan and Plant a Garden resource packet below to begin your unit project.  

Our Plan and Plant a Garden  28 page resource packet is designed to be printed out and then bound on the left with a three hole duo-tang, binder, comb bind spine, or hand sewn.   Some pages are templates and can be printed out as many times as needed and others are activity specific sheets.  Almost all of our pages are in colour. If ink is an issue, you can print out our resources in greyscale.

 

Step 2:  Begin going through the resource packet systematically with your children.   Resource focus areas include:

Learn about plants and their needs. Review the needs of plants using the included sheets. Visit any of the gardening sites listed below to help children learn about these details.

Learn about the Steps to Good Gardening. Using the online resources links or resources of your own, fill out the steps to good gardening practices on the sheet provided. Hints are also given on the page itself.

Learn about different types of gardens. There are many different types of gardens. Use these sheets to help you learn about some of the many different types of gardens that people can grow. Whether you live in the city with just a free sidewalk, out in the country with acres to roam, or just have a small backyard in a neighbourhood, there is always a garden waiting to be planted. What a way to experience God's glory!!

 

Step 3:  Select the type of garden you would like to plant and plan a garden to suit your needs.  Resource focus areas include:

Decide - What Kind of Garden Shall I Grow? After you investigate the different types of gardens available, use the graphic organizer to help your child determine the best kind of garden to plant in your particular home or designated area.

Decide - What Are You Going to Plant in Your Garden? Use this page to help children decide what kinds of plants they would like to plant. Do this page before you do the plant detective worksheets or in conjunction. The purpose of this page is to provide a record of what is desired in their garden with their own art work to illustrate their wishes. If you have a child that does NOT like art, pictures could be printed off the internet or cut out from old garden magazines and pasted on instead.

Be a Plant Fact Detective. Print out one sheet for each plant that will be placed in your garden or for any plant that your childe may be interested in learning about. Information can be gathered using the back of garden seed packets, info sheets available from most all garden centres, books from the library or from the internet. See our specially selected links for kids below for more help.

Draw a Map of Your Garden. This page will help your child map out thier growing space. There is also the opportunity for children to create a map key and practice directional activities. Perhaps you may want to help your child develop the map based on a particular time of the day as an alternative activity.

 

Step 4:  Prepare your growing area and plant your garden.

Learn about Good Gardening Tools.  How many gardening tools do you recognize from these pages? With just some quick searches online or a visit to your local hardware or garden supply centre you can find out what each tool is used for.

Create plant labels for your garden.  Using our templates create and stake garden labels in your planting area. This activity gives budding artists another opportunity to draw God's glory. Refer to the links below to help find pictures of your selected plant(s). The pre-printed selections are the plants in our own family garden here in BC, Canada.

 

Step 5:  Track the progress of your garden.  Resource focus areas include:

Track the Growth of Your Garden.  This is a wonderful way to have children practice patience and also measuring with a ruler at the same time.   As a side note, this can also be an opportunity for young mathematicians to practice graphing in another activity if you so choose by using just some simple graphing paper and different coloured pencils.

Note - How Big Did it Grow?  Track the progress of a favourite plant with art. You could also print this page out to do more than one plant if a child has more than one "favourite" plant that they want to track. Have a really young learner? This is a way that Pre/K+ can choose and track the progress of only one plant using drawing.

Make Memories using the Photo Keepsake Pages.  Don't forget to take lots of pictures with your little gardeners in their element. Great to show proof of learning for SLPs (student learning plans) and show friends and family too!! 