TOT SCHOOL: GARDENING

"Every child is a different kind of flower, and all together make this world a beautiful garden."

This week was a great extension to our Flower theme we did last week. We incorporated flowers into our activities along with some fruits and vegetables.

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GROSS MOTOR ACTIVITIES

To setup this activity, I added some dirt and soil to a bowl with some gardening tools. About 10 feet away I placed a planter. He used the tools to transfer the dirt into the planter. I had him try to walk quickly, walk backwards, etc. 

FINE MOTOR & ART ACTIVITIES

I used this tray I found at the Dollar Tree for this easy sorting activity. I opened each seed packet and took a few seeds from each one and placed them into each area. Next, I poured out the rest of the seeds into the middle of the tray. I placed the packets under each area of the tray so we could talk about what those seeds looked like as he sorted. Finally, he chose a fine motor tool {he used his tweezers, fingers, kitchen tongs and fine motor scooper} to sort the seeds. 

I found these perfect vegetable and fruit flashcards online {link in plans} from Teddy & Bee and printed them out. I put them in a bin along with some shredded brown paper aka "dirt" and he used his fine motor tools to find the food, tell me the name of it and then sort by color to make a pretty rainbow of foods! 

For this craft, he painted the bottom half of a paper plate brown for the dirt and the top part blue for the sky. Then I printed out some carrots {link for carrots found on my plans}, cut them out, taped them to his area and he painted them. After they dried, he glued them to his plate.

We've recently gotten into some pre-writing practice by using thin Expo markers on sheet protectors. I made this fun little themed Pre-Writing sheet {found on my plans and in my TPT Store } and placed in a sheet protector. Then he had to get the bunny to his fruits and vegetables by using the marker to trace the lines. 

SENSORY ACTIVITIES

Once he was done with the flashcards, we used REAL food! It was a lot of FUN! And I actually had a lot of the foods already! 

Of course we had to do some sort of planting this week! We planted some green beans, sunflowers, kale and marigolds. We're excited to watch them grow! PS - he got in some fine motor practice by using his spray bottle to water his seeds! 

THEMED SNACKS

I put some hummus in a glass and added mini carrots. For the green tops I used some cilantro pieces I had in our refrigerator. 

To start, I added some cream cheese to a ziploc baggie and added food coloring to make the black dots (my son helped with this part). Next, I spread some cream cheese on a cracker and topped with cherry tomato halves. Then, I piped on the black dots and added a black olive for the head. Finally, I added some greens for the antennae.

Here's our plans for the week! Don't forget to tag me on social media @toddler_fundamentals so I can see what you're up to! Click the photo below! 

Thanks for stopping by!