School Activities: Garden Recording

This one is an activity we are planning on doing weekly throughout the summer to record the growth of our garden. We planted probably our biggest garden yet this year, and to help keep the kids interested I wanted to show them how it changes over time. The first thing we do is measure the tallest of each plant, since we have multiples of most of them. To be scientifically accurate you are supposed to measure either each plant or the same plant every single week, but with a four and two year old I'm not worried about it too much...

Don't you just want to measure this cute little guy?

Fresh spinach!

The peas are coming along quite nicely.

Strawberry flowers are blooming. We are expecting our first fruits probably late next week!

As we measured each plant, I had the kids record how many inches tall they were. The four year old wrote all of his own numbers (notice he wrote I I I I  for the watermelon - told me 1+1+1+1=4!). The two year old mostly played in the dirt while I wrote the measurements, but she helped out a little bit.

After that I wanted them each to pick one thing they each noticed about the garden. My son said "The plants are growing big and strong" and my daughter said "the garden has plants." I'm hoping they remember things next time like flowers. They each drew a picture of the garden. Ethan's shows dirt, water, and that the plants are in lines. Little Miss's shows a ladybug.

I have altered the printout next time so I can add their names and the date to each one. I three-hole-punched their papers and put them in our school notebook for safe keeping. It took quite awhile (especially since it was 90 degrees outside and I about passed out from the heat) but they enjoyed it, and now that we have done it once I think it will go much quicker next time.