Gardening

I found this taste safe sensory bin that looks cool, so I thought I’d share it with you as well. On "My Bored Toddler" they played with insects, but you could also play with fake flowers and make a garden. I know I am working on putting my garden together. You may be too. If you’re worried about your little ones eating real dirt, maybe they can play with their dirt while you play with yours. You can let them make a garden with flowers or some pretend vegetables too. You can talk with them about being dirty, growing plants.

Let's get outside and go on a Nature Scavenger Hunt. You can print out the Nature Scavenger Hunt picture list I’ve made or make your own. Go for a walk in your neighborhood. Hopefully it’s nice outside, currently it's a bit chilly in Chicago.

Use two toilet paper rooms taped together to make some binoculars to go on your Scavenger Hunt and find your items. Pick some flowers on your walk, or in your backyard. You’ll use them for art.

The flowers you picked on your nature walk can now be used for some art projects. You can use Dandelions or leaves like stamps or like a paint brush. If you don’t have paint at home, don’t worry you can make some with a few items you probably already have at home with this Homemade Flour Paint Recipe from the blog Playdough to Plato.

You could also take some bigger Flowers like daffodils to make a collage. Take them apart and glue the parts to a paper to make a collage. If you have clear contact paper, you can make a nature suncatcher with your flower parts instead of putting it on paper. I actually used my little laminator, best $20 I ever spent buying that thing.

A cute book on Vooks is My Garden by Kevin Henkes. I just love Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert, I found it on Amazon, no where digital though. I just came across a new book website and as an "Educator" you can sign up for free, I put my Sassy Speechy as my private school. You can share free access with your students until June 30, 2020 with this link. I love to spread the love and help people get resources especially now since we can't exactly go to the library to pick up some new books.

If you're a therapist doing teletherapy right now. Here is an Elmo game you can play during your teletherapy session. It's Ready, Set, Grow with Abby and Elmo. You can talk about the steps to plant a seed in the garden. First you dig a hole. Then you plant the seed. Then you cover it up. Last you water it. There are several spots in the garden to plant some seeds. They have three seeds to choose from so you can work on the names, carrot, tomato, flower; or colors orange, red, purple. Once your plant if full grown, there are 3 things to pick. If the kids aren't able to click on the items, it just means more opportunity for language as they tell you what to do. I played with my one of my kiddos, he's 3 and did well with it.

Vocab-

Name the colors, count

"dirt, dig, flower, plant, sun, pick, water"