Homeschool Theater

Tending a garden bed presents homeschoolers the easy opportunity to work on many foundational math and science skills with your preschooler or kindergartner, without needing to do any lesson-planning. Number conservation, patterns and ordinal numbers are three of the early skills easily incorporated in your garden time. In a previous article I wrote about classification, shape-recognition and one-to-one correspondence.

Ask your little one to be your helper and include him in the planting process. Take advantage of his interest, and let him go play when his attention shifts. Much learning occurs through discussion. Talk about everything you are doing in the garden, and listen to your child’s input.

Number conservation
Let’s say you wish to plant ten squash plants. Hand your child the ten seeds, and have her line them up on the table as she counts them. Then spread out the line and ask her how many seeds there are. Push them into a pile and ask the same question. Poke ten holes in the soil for those seeds and ask your child to lay one seed in each hole. How many seeds now? If she doesn’t know, how can she find out?

Patterns
Perhaps you will lay out the flowers in a pattern. “We have three colors of snapdragons. First we plant a red snapdragon, yellow is second, and third is a pink one. What comes next?” Or the garden care schedule: “Every morning we water the seedlings, then pull the weeds, and last sweep the pathways. So tomorrow morning, what do we start with?” Notice the patterns of fence post and pickets in the garden fence, or the arrangement of pavers in the path. You can find patterns in flowers and in the leaves on the stems.

Ordinal numbers
Use the words first, second and third, and more if needed, to describe everything that happens in your garden. “First we plan the garden, second we buy the seeds, and third we plant them.” “First we plant the sunflowers, the zinnias are second and the marigolds are third.” You can use ordinal numbers to describe plant growth, the passing of seasons, or the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly. (See also Patterns.)

You will notice how each of these garden activities uses foundational skills that overlap and mix with each other. As you are talking with your child while you work in your garden, you will find many occasions to reinforce these much-needed pre-math and science skills. Check this article for more math skills that overlap with these. Happy planting!