Gardens: A Harvest of Learning No Matter the Season

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Gardens—spring, summer, or fall—harvest plentiful learning activities. Seems like every time we turn around we are enjoying another experience involving fruits and veggies. Here's a sampling of possibilities, and likely your learners will discover others. Enjoy the harvest no matter what the season.

Math

  • Estimate the weight of a watermelon. Weigh on a bathroom scale. Figure out the price per paid per pound.

  • Purchase a five pound bag of potatoes. Compare the quantity with a five pound bag of onions. Why the difference in quantity per pound? Younger children can weigh potatoes and arrange from lightest to heaviest.

  • Buy a basket full of veggies. Sort according to what part of the plant is eaten: stem, leaf, seed, root, flower. Eat vegetables for snack or create a yummy soup.

Language Arts

  • Read Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert. Make veggie soup for dinner.

  • Read the Farm Alphabet Book by Jane Miller. Make your own fruits and veggies alphabet book.

  • Identify the beginning consonant sounds of each vegetable purchased.

  • Read Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z by Lois Ehlert.

  • Read Stone Soup by Marcia Brown (a traditional tale).

  • Read Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens (a trickster tale).

  • Read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.

Spanish

Social Studies

  • Tour the produce section of the grocery store.

  • Visit a working farm, garden store, orchard, local U-pick or greenhouse.

Science

  • Plant a garden.

  • Build a grow box and sow the family’s favorite seeds.

  • Spout seeds. Discuss vocabulary: seeds, seedlings, cuttings, sprout, germinate.

  • Read The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons

  • Read Green Beans, Potatoes, and Even Tomatoes by Brian Cleary

  • Read One Bean by Anne Rockwell.

  • Sprout an avocado seed.

  • Grow or purchase a pie pumpkin. Open. Clean. Bake. Puree pumpkin and make bread.

  • Read The Life Cycle of a Bean by Linda Tagliaferro.

  • Read Foods from Farms by Nancy Dickmann.

  • Read Plants on a Farm by Nancy Dickmann.

  • Read Farming by Gail Gibbons. Discuss farming around the world.

  • Read From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.

  • Read Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert.

  • Read The Victory Garden Vegetable Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta.

Arts

  • Make prints using tempera paints and fruits and veggies (potato, cabbage, celery, corn, and oranges)

  • Read Linnea in Monet's Garden by Christina Bjork.

  • Make a seed collage.

  • Sing Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow. Act out the song with motions.

  • Read How Are You Peeling? by Joost Effers and Saxton Freymann. Discuss the illustrations. Children may also enjoy Fast Food by the same authors.

Movement

  • Play Hot Potato (hand-eye coordination)