Gardens and Plants Theme

In the spring when we talk about gardens and plants, we try to take a field trip to our local garden park and nature preserve. We talk about using our senses to explore the plants at the park and end our trip with some ice cream. Back in the classroom, we use flowers and veggies in our many centers. We sort the flowers by color. We set up a flower shop in our dramatic play center. I lay out paper shapes and the students use the shapes and their imagination to create a flower, making sure it has all of the parts that we discuss in our science lesson (leaves, petals, stem, roots). We plant seeds in pots for our moms and take them home as a surprise. There are many good gardening books we read. Here are a few of them:
*"Lola Plants a Garden"
*"The Surprise Garden"
*"Growing Vegetable Soup"
*"In the Tall, Tall Grass."
I also have a collection of seeds that the students can explore and sort and even guess what the seeds will grow in to.

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