Kids Crafts: Making Mini Books & Garden Journals

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Welcome to this week’s kids’s craft – Making Mini Books, which we turned into our Kids’ Garden Journal! First we dif some gardening and then we made some mini books out ONE sheet of paper (very cool and very exciting). This mini book will become the children’s “Garden Journal” (or simply use it as a colouring book or for creating stories). Either skip our gardening part and head straight for the mini book, OR, come and see how the kids got planting first! It is something that I love doing with the children every year and it is wonderful to see them learn and develop their understanding of their environment.

garden journal

The lovely people at innocent kids are currently giving away a range of seeds for kids to grow this Spring – definitely worth getting your hands on some! We received a set of own (as well as gorgeous watering can & gardening tools *thank you*) and the kids couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

Planting seedlings really is quite straight forward. We have set of newspaper seedling pots that we have made, but we decided to grow the kids’ special seeds in some old juice carton containers. Perfect bit of upcycling and shows that you can use anything – from newspapers, to egg cartons, to yoghurt pots to juice cartons to get going! So… our afternoon:

vegetable gardening

1) Inspect your seeds! (very important – after all you need to decide what to plant!)

planting containers

2) Make some holes in your upcycled container. I used some sharp scissors for this. The kids really wanted to do this – but, tut tut, this one is for adults only.

vegetable gardening

3) Fill with earth. (We had a lot of earth going in AND out.. but got there eventually).

vegetable gardening

4) Place in your seedlings & name tags.

vegetable gardening

5) Add a little more earth

vegetable gardening planting

6) Water.

garden activities for kids

7) Water some more (and get a little wet).

READY!

I am going to try and make the kids responsible for these and remind them to water them every few days. We are also going to keep a Garden Diary and we will record.

This is a great little paper craft activity. I love things that you can make out of one sheet of paper. It looks “confusing” at first, but seriously, these books are easy and so cute. Make them anywhere, anytime (you can skip using scissors, once you are good at creasing!):

Our books:

garden journal

Now we are recording what we planted, when they sprouted, what vegetable grew first, how it tasted etc.

kids garden journal

kids garden journal

I think it will be a great “science” experiment for Red Ted!

And here is a lovely book to go with planting:

Up, Down, and AroundUp, Down And Around, by Kathryn Ayres. The first thing that caught Red Ted’s (2.5yrs) attention is all the detail. He loves all the little bugs and bunnies and snails on every page and loves finding them. He chose this book himself (when presented with a choice). It is fun, bright and colourful. I don’t think it is the “best” how do plants grow book, but then I am not sure what a “best book” for this age group would look like. It does show the sowing of seeds and the needing to water and then it focuses on how things grow (up or down etc) – so it definitely has the basics and I think it is great for Red Ted to understand that you can’t always see a vegetable growing – but that sometimes they are underground (we enjoyed talking about potatoes in particularly!). It ends wonderfully with a wonderful vegetable picnic – salad, soup, pie. Yummy. We like at the Red Ted household!


Now.. what I would like to know is – will you be planting with your kids this year? What will you grow? And will you have a go at making your very own Mini Book? Go on….