One of my favorite children's books about gardening is The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. The illustrations in this book are charming and beautiful. It tells the story of a little boy, Liam, who makes his city prettier by growing trees, flowers, and other plants. My classes have always enjoyed reading The Curious Garden. They especially like comparing the picture of the city before it had gardens to the picture of the city after Liam inspired everyone to grow things.
Since we were about to start beautifying our playground with gardens, it seemed to be the appropriate book to read. After reading it, we set out to plant gardens "just like the boy in the book", as one of our students put it.
Over the weekend, I had taken a trip to the local nursery to get some plants and potting soil. I also found some child-sized gardening tools, children's gardening gloves, and small watering cans. We already had some large terracotta pots that I moved into the outdoor kitchen area. Once we went outside, I let the children shovel dirt into (and out of) the pots for a while before we put the plants in.
The actual planting part didn't seem to interest the children very much, so I did most of it.
They all loved watering the plants, though. At this rate, these flowers and herbs will never be thirsty!
When we were finished, I let the children use the extra potting soil to fill small terra cota pots...
and plant other things.
They also used some of it to "cook" in the kitchen area.
Mud soup! Yum!
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