Garden Party: Flowers in the Vegetable Patch

Exploring Vegetable Flowers

Seeing the changes in the garden is so much fun. Our garden is giving us so many opportunities for learning–not only about agriculture, but also lots of nature study. Discovering that our vegetable plants have flowers, too, has been a surprise. The boys are observing the changes in the plants each day.

Some things they’ve noticed are the visitors to the flowers–bees, bugs, and caterpillars. They’ve also noticed the differences in the flowers. Some are made up of multiple tiny blossoms, some have individual petals, some are made up of one large petal, most are yellow.

Our garden classroom is a wonderful place of discovery and exploration. It has been a worthwhile investment in time and is proving to be an excellent curriculum!

Learning in the Garden

Art–Grab your nature journal and some pencils, find a plant to observe, and draw as many details as you can find. Look for shapes, lines, and shadows.

Science–Sit still and observe the activity around the plants. What critters are visiting? Draw them in your journal, and then look them up in your field guide to see what you can learn about them.

Math–Track the growth of the plants. Use a yardstick to see how tall they are getting. Track them each day or each week and make a graph to plot their progress.

Language Arts–Write an acrostic poem about the garden, using each letter of the word G-A-R-D-E-N to describe it. Or, choose another word from the garden: P-L-A-N-T, F-L-O-W-E-R, B-E-A-N, T-O-M-A-T-O . . . An acrostic poem uses the letters in a word to begin each line of a poem, and each line of the poem describes the main topic word.

History–Research how different plants got their start in your country. What plants are native to your area, and what plants were introduced by settlers and immigrants? What native plants are you growing? Find recipes from other cultures you can prepare using ingredients from your garden–salsa, spaghetti sauce, stir fry, etc.