Spring is the perfect time to try gardening with children! Here are some of our favorite gardening activities for kids to go along with one of my favorite pictures books, The Curious Garden. Note: this post includes affiliate links.
This site features affiliate links, which may earn me a small commission at no cost to you. Learn More
I received review copies of some of these books, but no other compensation and I was not required to review them here. All opinions are my own.
Garden Book Activities for Children Everywhere
Children intuitively appreciate growing things! Here are some fun ways to explore gardens with kids – whether or not you have the space for a “proper” garden!
PLANT A SEED
My oldest daughter is brilliant at finding seeds and growing them! Two years ago she saved a seed from the wisteria tree that grew in the middle of our building courtyard, and then germinated the seed by placing it in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel and taping that to the window. Then she transplanted the seedling into a cup with some dirt. I didn’t really think it would survive, but it thrived! This year she planted seeds in egg shells.
Did you know that many herbs can be grown in a glass of water? Sage, mint, thyme, basil, and oregano are all easy to root in water.
Try Container Gardening
You can grow just about anything in a container, if you’re willing to think creatively! My sister once grew watermelons by having vines crawl up a trellis. Sugar snap peas are a favorite container garden plant in our house. They will need some sort of spike or trellis system to climb up, although it doesn’t need to be as intense as my sister’s watermelon trellis!
Learn how to plant a container garden with kids.
Too Cold? START Plants Indoors
It might be too cold to plant outside where you live, but you can start seedlings inside! We did this every year when we lived in Massachusetts. I picked the basic plants for our garden, but I always let each child pick something that I would not have selected to grow. Sometimes the plants grew, and sometimes they didn’t, but we always enjoyed the process.
Learn While You Grow
Kids learn so much about plants as they grow their gardens – however large or small the gardens are! This life cycle of a green bean plant toy is great for helping children track the growth of plants.
Sprout and Grow window planters are perfect for helping kids learn how plant root systems develop and thrive.
My absolute favorite plant experiment, though, requires no special equipment. If you’re planting seedlings, be sure to give this plants and sunlight experiment a go!
Read About How Plants Grow
These non-fiction books teach kids about the plant growing process.
- Roots by Vijaya Khisty Bodach
- Seed to Plant by Kristin Baird Rattini
- How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan
- From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
Try this plant growth algorithm coding worksheet after reading one of the books above!
Play with your garden
My kids love building fairy villages around tomato plants; trees also make wonderful foundations for fairy villages.
Get playful with your seedlings by decorating pots for them and even adding faces to your eggshell seedlings.
It’s also fun to make pretty gardens. A few years ago my kids gifted tiny terrariums to their teachers at the end of the school year. And last year my seven-year-old enjoyed making this little terrarium.
What are your favorite ways to enjoy gardening with kids?
Storybook science is one of my favorite kids’ activities series on the internet, and this is my third year participating (first year on this site)! Click on the image above to see all the posts this year.
Do you have a favorite garden themed book? How about garden book activities that I should add to this post? Please share on my Facebook page!