Growing Together: Open Forum

Those are both good ideas.

You could make little weather vanes. We make bee boxes out of the small milk cartons kids get at school. Cut off the top and fill with paper straws and twigs. Precut the straws to the height of the carton. I give each kid a glob of homemade playdo to stick in the bottom of the carton. It holds the straws in place.You could have the kids create their own pollinator guide. I have posters on each pollinator that I have created with some basic facts. The kids can use the posters to help them. They choose two or three pollinators, draw a picture and write two facts. Look for shapes and patterns in the garden. Do flower pounding -Take 100% white cotton. Put some petals on masking tape. Tape the flowers on the cotton. Pound on the tape with a rubber mallet. They can glue and twig to the top of the material to make a hanging piece of art. Make sure to twig is a few inches longer than the material so they can tie a piece of twine on each end.

Those are both good ideas.

You could make little weather vanes. We make bee boxes out of the small milk cartons kids get at school. Cut off the top and fill with paper straws and twigs. Precut the straws to the height of the carton. I give each kid a glob of homemade playdo to stick in the bottom of the carton. It holds the straws in place.You could have the kids create their own pollinator guide. I have posters on each pollinator that I have created with some basic facts. The kids can use the posters to help them. They choose two or three pollinators, draw a picture and write two facts. Look for shapes and patterns in the garden. Do flower pounding -Take 100% white cotton. Put some petals on masking tape. Tape the flowers on the cotton. Pound on the tape with a rubber mallet. They can glue and twig to the top of the material to make a hanging piece of art. Make sure to twig is a few inches longer than the material so they can tie a piece of twine on each end.

Painting rocks to place in the garden

Play "find the gnome" (take turns hiding a garden gnome)

Bingo with plants or seed packets as prizes

Garden taste test

Make salsa

Build a trellis 

How to propogate a plant

We have done animal encounters...baby chicks, bee and lady bugs are very popular. One of our educators was able to check out (non-living) specimens from the local Natural History Museum. We have explored local indigenous history and traditions. Other activities include cooking/food preparation classes (spring rolls, salsa, veggie sushi rolls, noodles), apple variety tasting, fruit and veggie bingo, trash sorting, creating advertisements for vegetables, making seed balls, nature scavenger hunts, garden yoga and reading from our library of garden-themed books.