Spring is finally here, which means the flowers are starting to bloom and we are looking forward to spending more time outside. We are constantly inspired by my neighbor’s beautiful garden, so this year my daughter has decided that she would like a garden of her own. Luckily, we had the opportunity to check out this fun new book from Sleeping Bear Press about creating the perfect garden – even if it isn’t the exact garden you planned. We also paired it with fun gardening activities for kids, so get ready to get your hands dirty!

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Badger’s Perfect Garden was written by Marsha Diane Arnold and illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki. Badger has been gathering seeds for a year, planning on creating the perfect garden. When he starts to plant, his friends decide to pitch in. They are meticulous, measuring each row and keeping similar seeds together. When a big storm blows through, Badger worries that his perfect garden has been destroyed. When summer comes at last, he learns that his precious seeds didn’t disappear, and his friends show him that the perfect garden doesn’t have to be exactly what you envisioned to be beautiful.

The lovely story is paired with brightly colored illustrations full of adorable animal characters. The themes of friendship and dealing with unpredictable circumstances are easy for kids to identify with, and the beautiful illustrations of plants and flowers will have you itching to create your very own “perfect” garden.

Garden Sensory Play

For this fun sensory activity, I laid out brown playdough and an assortment of flower shaped beads and buttons. I encouraged my daughter to explore with the dough and beads, imagining that they were real dirt and flowers. She had a lot of fun creating her own garden, and we soon started laying out patterned rows of flowers. We took turns creating patterns and encouraging the other one to finish the pattern.

Next, I encouraged her to create some letters using the beads. We started pushing the flowers into the “dirt” in the shape of various letters, shapes, and even numbers. This was a great way to practice letter and number recognition.

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Planning a Garden

This book inspired us to act on our plans to create our own “perfect” garden. Since I wanted my daughter to have ownership of the garden, I took her to the store and allowed her to have a say in what seeds we would plant. We have had unpredictable weather here, so we haven’t been able to plant them outside yet, but we are hoping to create a raised garden bed this year that will be all hers. I am excited to watch her work in her own garden and hopefully reap the rewards when plants start to grow!

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Garden Match

I was inspired by the site Montessori from the Heart to make this matching game and help us to work on upper and lower case letters. (Click here to see her original!) To create this activity, I took an empty tissue box and wrapped it in brown paper. Next I used a knife to cut slits across the box in even rows, leaving enough space to write letters underneath. Lastly, I wrote one lower case letter on 26 colored craft sticks, and wrote an upper case letter in front of each slit in the box. I made different color patterns in each row to give her practice in recognizing patterns too. I encouraged her to match the letters together by “planting” the letter “garden stakes” into the box.

You could also use this idea to practice spelling words or patterns. Leave the box blank and encourage kids to “plant” the craft sticks with letters and build a spelling word. You could also have kids create patterns with the stakes they are planting, and try to complete each others patterns.

We are so excited that Spring is finally here and this beautiful book has us ready to get out there and start planting! Does your family plant a garden together? Share in the comments!

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