In The Garden Unit for Third Graders
The garden seems like the perfect place to start when you are thrown into homeschooling in early Spring. My kids, like millions of other kids, were sent home from school on a Friday in mid-March with no real return date in sight.
Admittedly, I have an advantage here. I have a Masters’ degree in Education. I’m licensed to teach third grade. And I’ve homeschooled them before, just not recently.
That does NOT mean this is easy. Nope, even for me.
My kids did come home with various recommended readings and websites to spend time on, but that’s never been my style of teaching. I think to be outside. I like to get our hands a little dirty. I like to turn the pages of a real hard book.
There has definitely been a huge adjustment here despite all of my supposed preparation for this kind of situation. It’s a life adjustment having us all at home. It’s finding a new routine and remembering that my expectations are different than school’s. It’s trying to be flexible.
It’s a work in progress.
What is working is loving Spring. Here is our unit on Gardening for Third Graders (although it could easily be adjusted for younger or older grades as well).
In the Garden Unit
My kids love gardening so it is something we do every Spring even though I have yet to successfully keep a plant alive on my own. They seem to have inherited a green thumb that perhaps skipped a generation.
Tying their interest in gardening and plants into our learning seemed like a great way to start our Spring homeschooling quarantine adventure. It encourages their interest, it gets us outside, and it would hopefully make learning in this new, uncertain time more enjoyable.
Field Trips / Adventures:
These are few and far between these days. However! We are permitted to get outside for exercise so we have been going on daily walks and there is a little garden of flowers around the corner from us in a public space. Here are things you can do in a public garden or while observing flowers in your neighborhood (while maintaining proper distance of course!)
Watch me talk more about Flower Hunting with Kids on YouTube
- Bring cameras and take photos
- Bring sketchpads and draw
- Bring a flower guide and try to label the kinds of flowers
Having a mission and a tool to use on our walks has always been effective for helping my kids slow down and look more closely at their environment on walks.
When we’ve done Garden units in the past we’ve gone to Botanic Gardens or visited nurseries, which we can’t do right now. But we do have these lovely flowers in a public space around the corner from us and that’s just enough of an adventure to encourage them to look closely and get excited about gardening.
You May Also Like: Butterflying Nature Walk with Extension Ideas
Literacy
- Read THANK YOU, GARDEN and then Write Your Own Poem mirrors the language of this text. How would you describe your garden?
- Choral Reading Poetry about Gardens and Caterpillars, etc. We read the poem Caterpillars by Aileen L. Fisher from a poetry book we have but here are a bunch of other options.
- Cursive Pages from PAGE A DAY. My kids are cursive obsessed this year so they found these printables (see image below) super fun. (A Page A Day also has books for Math, including Multiplication Practice! And they’re offering a bunch of their books FREE to download right now!)
Math
- Fractions flowers – we used this free printable Fraction Flower Craftivity
Science
- Learn about Seed Dispersal. We read MISS MAPLE’S SEEDS and then did the Mystery Science seed dispersal activity (you can sign up for a free membership to access their science lessons as a homeschooling paren).
- Plant a Garden (and watch it grow)
Art
- Paint a Garden – We painted a huge collaborative garden together (see below) using the guidelines in this art workshops for kids book by Herve Tullet (author/illustrator of PRESS HERE). I love love love this book and fully credit it for at least half the times I look like a creative mama.
A week in that is where we are. Watching our garden. Fingers and toes still speckled with a little paint. Asking questions about seeds.
Next week (the first full week in April) our public school officially starts “online schooling” more in earnest. It’s still not clear what that will look like or how much flexibility we will have. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that I can meet their teachers’ expectations and still continue filling their days with active, playful learning.
Other Garden Ideas:
- Picture Books to Put You in the Garden
- Spring Planting Unit for Toddlers and Preschoolers
- Growing a Seed Storytime
- Butterfly Unit
- Butterfly Storytime