Planting & Gardening: My Favorite Books - Planting a Rainbow, Growing Vegetable Soup & The Tiny Seed Plus Activities

Here are some of my favorite Planting and Gardening Activities:

My Favorite Books to Read:

The Tiny Seed By Eric Carle
Planting a Rainbow By Lois Ehlert
Growing Vegetable Soup By Lois Ehlert

If you haven't discovered Lois Ehlert, be sure and check her books out - she's awesome!

Tomorrow, I will list my favorite websites with fabulous activities to go along with these great books!

Cute Crafts:

Coffee Filter Flowers by Family Corner

Make a beautiful flower bouquet. These flowers are quick, easy, inexpensive and fun for all ages. Use your imagination to come up with your own varieties! For each flower you will need:
2 basket style drip coffee filters
Food coloring (2 colors)
Wooden skewer
Green construction paper
Clear tape
White glue
Green paint or marker


Scrunchy Blossoms By Kids Craft Weekly


Our scrunchy blossoms turned out so nicely that we have decided to keep them in a vase on the kitchen table. These blossoms are easy to make – younger kids with good fine motor skills should be able to manage quite easily. You will need• pink or white crepe paper• scissors• twigs• kids pvc glue and paintbrush1. Cut crepe paper into small pieces – we cut ours into roughly one inch squares.2. Scrunch a piece of crepe paper into a small tight ball. Dip it in glue and stick it to your twig. Keep going until your stick is in full bloom.






Build a Terrarium By Kids Gardening

Be sure and visit this great website:

My First Garden

a guide to the world of fun and clever gardening
Have Fun Planting!
Pam

Terrific Tuesday Earth Day Crafts

Earth Day Crafts
from Making Friends.com

Litter Bug

Materials:

Trash (Newspaper, String, Straws, Bottle Tops, Caps)

Tacky Glue or low temp glue gun

Crumple up a piece of newspaper. Wrap another piece around it. Wrap with string and tie off to hold newspaper in a ball. Add straws, bottle tops, caps... anything to make it look like a litter bug.

Coffee Filter Earth

Materials:

Coffee Filter

Blue and Green Food Coloring

Directions:
Scatter approximately 4 drops of green food coloring and 5 drops of blue food coloring in the bottom of a coffee filter using the Earth pattern as a guide. Color should spread out to fill the entire bottom. Let dry. Cut out the bottom. Tape or hang in window.

Melted Crayon Earth

Materials:

Wax Paper
Blue and Green Crayon Shavings

Adult with warm iron

Place a piece of wax paper over Earth pattern. Sprinkle crayon shavings (sparingly!) on wax paper following the design on the download. Place another piece of wax paper on top of shavings and a blank sheet of paper or a cloth over that. Gently press down with a warm iron. Crayon will melt quickly. Cut wax paper into a circle around the design. Tape or hang in window.

Rainstick

Materials:
Cardboard Tube
Tinfoil
Cardboard for end caps
Popcorn Kernels
Hot Glue Gun
Markers
Scissors

Trace around end of tube onto a piece of cardboard. Cut out. Glue one of these onto one end for a cap. Tightly roll pieces of tinfoil into a long snake about twice as long as your tube and about 1/2" in diameter. Push tinfoil snake into tube zigzagging it back and forth to fit. Pour 1/2 cup of pop corn kernels into tube. Cap off remaining end.
Decorated with markers.
To play: turn stick back and forth. Popcorn kernels will cascade over tinfoil sounding like a gentle rain

Enjoy!

Pam

Kids Spring Crafts and Cooking: Caterpillar Craft and Kite in the Clouds Recipe

Caterpillar Craft

From Kids Craft.com

Here's what you'll need...
• Construction paper

• Scissors
• Pipe cleaner

• Marker

• Pen or pencil

Here's how you make it...
1. Cut different colored circles out of construction paper. Cut as many as you'd like, the more you cut the more colorful and long your caterpillar will be.

2. Using a pen or pencil, punch holes in the center of each circle and

tread onto a pipe cleaner.

Repeat until you have made your caterpillar as long as

you would like it.

3. Fold the pipe cleaner on either end to secure the circles and draw on two eyes.

My kids love this craft! It's a fun way to talk about patterns.
I make 3 samples:

random colored caterpillar

AB pattern caterpillar ( green yellow green yellow)
ABC pattern caterpillar (green yellow orange green yellow orange)

Kite in the Clouds Recipe

Ingredients:

1 box of blue jello - already prepared

1 can of whipped cream
1/2 fruit roll up per child cut into the shape of a kite

clear cup

straw

Directions:
Fill up cup 2/3 full with your jello. What color is the jello?
Look outside - what does the color of the jello remind you of?

The blue jello represents the sky.

I usually sneak in a math lesson - Put 6 spoonfuls of jello in your cup

Then the best part of this recipe - Fill the cup up with whipped cream.

WOW! What a hit!
My kids loved squirting the whipped cream!

Place your straw with your kite in your clouds and Voila!
You have a beautiful kite flying high in the sky in the clouds!

Best of all - it's quite tasty!

I love cooking with kids. I've never met a child that didn't like to measure, stir, and eat!
I always make sure that I have everything handy and ready to go, I usually cook with 8 - 10 children at a time and if you have to go look for an item - it can get really messy! When choosing recipes, I try to pick ingredients that the majority will like - I hate to waste food.

Most importantly, keep it simple!

I hope you enjoy these activities, click on comments and let me know!
Pam