Spring is the perfect time of year for you and your kiddos to explore plants! If you need a bit of inspiration, Mrs. Lee, kindergarten teacher and creator of Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten, has some awesome cross-curricular ideas that incorporate literacy and crafting into your scientific investigation of plants!

A Letter From Mr. McGregor

To start off the unit, Julie and her kiddos enjoy Beatrix Potter's beloved children's story The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

While the book isn't particularly about plants or gardening, it's super cute to see how Julie incorporates the characters and story into the lesson. For their first activity, the students received a letter from Mr. McGregor himself! In the letter, he asks the students for help learning about plants and taking care of his garden.

With the mission to help Mr. McGregor and answer all of his questions, Julie and her kiddos then set out to learn everything they could about plants and write him back!

To extend their learning, after constructing their response, Mrs. Lee had her kinders help her circle sight words and first grade letter sounds.

'Growing' A Garden

As they explored various plants, Mrs. Lee and her kiddos documented their learning by 'growing' a garden! Didn't it turn out lovely!?

Strawberries, squash, carrots, potatos, etc. students crafted each vegetable/fruit and, demonstrating their learning about the parts of a plant, labeled each using the following prompt...

"My ___________ is a ___________ that I can eat."

For example,

• "My turnip is a root that I can eat."
• "My squash is a fruit that I can eat."
• "My strawberry is a flower that I can eat."
• "My peas are seeds that I can eat."

This project offers a great opportunity for painting with the actual fruits/vegetables! Potato printing is pretty common, but it could be really fun to see what effects you might get from painting/printing with strawberries, turnips, etc.

Or, another fun idea might be to make paint from the actual vegetables! This might not work for all of the vegetables, and you might have to consider the fact that the paint would potentially become perishable, but it could be a unique 'in addition to' craft idea!

Peter Rabbit Writing Craftivity

And no garden is complete without Peter Rabbit! After 'growing' their garden, Mrs. Lee had her kiddos make Peter Rabbit crafts and write about what they would have done if they were Peter Rabbit.

Lots of great activity ideas and tons of great learning! We love that Julie ties this classic tale into her plant unit; it's unique and, with the variety of activities offered, is sure to keep your kiddos' attention! For these and other great ideas, be sure to visit Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten!