Garden Week

This post is slightly behind.  About three weeks ago our theme was garden/plants.  The kids were so engaged and cooperative for this theme we were able to do a lot!

Day one:

• We read “Desert Plants” and talked about all the different plants near our homes.  
• Since we didn’t have a letter of the week but rather a review of the alphabet I read a couple of ABC books and had the kids sing their alphabet in different ways.
• Sang a couple of new songs like ’ten little flowers’ and ‘if you have a little seed’.
• We read another plant book from the library, I cannot recall the name.  It discussed different kinds of plants all over the world.  We talked about how plants are living and the things they need to survive.  Then we talked about the different parts of a plant.
• I had placed four different celery stalks in different colored water.  Each of the kids ‘dissected’ a celery stalk and ‘inspected’ their dissection to see how the water moves up the “straws”.  This showed the kids how plants “drink” their water.
• Next the kids do-a-dot painted flowers
• Then we went outside to look at different plants.  I showed them seeds that corresponded to the different plants.  
• They each put together their own chia-pet caterpillar.
• We did a little mosaic tile art making flowers and different plants.
• For snack time we ate plants - apples and oranges.
• The kids then practiced some fine motor and writing by tracing ‘water’ from a watering can to a flower and writing their names on the back of their paper.
• Finally we talked about Bees, butterflies and other flying insects and birds and how they help pollinate flowers and plants.  The kids then played “Bee Tag”  They LOVED this.  The kids were bees chasing flowers trying to catch some nectar for their hive.

Day 2:

• Today we focused more on reviewing our alphabet.  We played a bee/flower game where the kids had to match the upper case letter on the Bee with the lower case letter on the flower.  They worked together really well on this and did surprisingly well.
• Then the kids did a little fine motor tracing the number nine (our number of the day) and counting out nine flower stickers that they peeled and stuck on their “garden”
• We folded flower pots out of paper and the kids filled them with dirt.  I put starter basil plants in the pots and we reiterated what the plants would need to grow.
• We played a game I called “bug in my garden”  I put nine large plastic bugs in my garden. The kids took turns using salad tongs to ‘catch’ the bugs and get them out of the garden.  They really liked this game we did it about three different times.  It was great for taking turns and good fine motor with gripping the salad tongs.
• For snack time the kids had ABC crackers.
• Finally we read “Chicka-Chicka Boom-Boom”.  The kids made a ‘coconut tree’ of their own by glueing a trunk and using their hand print for the leaves.  Then I gave them all small ABC stickers to place all around the tree like in the book.  I couldn’t believe how great Riley was at this activity.  The stickers were quite small and took a lot of concentration to get off of the wrappers.  The boys each took a little while getting theirs off and onto their page.  Riley was able to get the stickers off better than I could.  She was done in half the time!

Another successful week with these fun little kiddos!