Gardening is great way for children to experience nature and science by exploring how things grow and where food comes from while offering opportunities for lessons in math, language, social interactions and cultures.
Stay Connected
Sign up to receive news, helpful tools and learn about how you can help our youngest learners.
Early Childhood Gardening Tips
- Get your child excited about gardening. Create dedicated beds or boxes for your child to use for gardening to create a connection for him to watch as his garden grows.
- Bring gardening inside. You can encourage your child’s engagement with the garden inside the home by studying plants and foods and reading related books. One idea is to read “Jack and the Beanstalk”. After reading the book, you and your child can plant, estimate, measure and document her own beanstalk’s growth.
- Involve your family. Gardens are a great place to bring your family together. Children will enjoy taking family members on a walk through their garden. When it comes time to harvest, you can teach your family how to make healthy meals with the fruits of your labor.
- Let your child explore. They can take a magnifying glass into the garden and discover insects living in the dirt and among the plants. Encourage grazing and nibbling as your child works in her garden.
More Like This
Recommended for Preschoolers
Materials Needed:
- Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert
- A pencil, crayon, pen or other writing tool, and paper
- Grocery store advertisements and scissors
Developmental Goals:
- Identify a variety of healthy food options, in this case fruits and vegetables.
- Associate letters with the beginning sounds of words.
- Recognize upper and lower case letters. Categorize produce as either a fruit or a vegetable.
In the Future:
- The more opportunities young children have to explore a variety of foods, the more likely that they will eat a varied and healthy diet as they grow.
- As children build their understanding of letters and the sounds they make, they will begin to piece letters together in invented spelling.
- The ability to categorize objects is a beginning math skill that children will later build upon as they identify the properties of shapes and understand how to complete a pattern.
Activity:
- Introduce the book to your child. As with any new book, take time to allow her to explore the book’s pictures on her own before sitting down to read it out loud.
- As you read the book, invite her to talk about the foods she sees on each page.
- In addition to simply identifying the fruits and vegetables, talk about which ones she likes, which ones she wants to try, or what recipes you could make with the foods.
- If your child has shown an interest in the alphabet, invite her to tell you the letters she recognizes.
- For more letter play, you can encourage her to make connections among the letter sounds and the first letter of the foods on each page.
- After enjoying the book a few times, invite your child to guess which foods are fruits and which are vegetables. You can extend on this idea by bringing out grocery store advertisements from the newspaper and having her cut out pictures of fruits and vegetables. Once she cuts out the pictures, have her sort them into two piles: a fruit pile and a vegetable pile.
- You can take this further by having your child create a grocery list of fruits and vegetables by either drawing pictures of the foods, writing letters to represent the beginning sounds of each food, or using invented spelling. At the store, ask your child to look closely for the foods that she put on your list.
More Like This
Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your toddler will learn about the idea of perspective by using everyday objects and comparing their sizes.
Stay Connected
Sign up to receive news, helpful tools and learn about how you can help our youngest learners.
Materials Needed:
- Paper (can be a newspaper, magazines, paper bags, notebook paper, etc.)
- A pencil or other writing tool
- Tape (optional)
Developmental Goals:
- Understand the idea of larger and smaller.
- Increase the use of mathematical vocabulary such as larger than or smaller than.
- Support understanding of ordering objects by size (smallest to largest or largest to smallest).
In the Future:
- The ability to order objects by size will build the foundation for the understanding that numbers represent different amounts.
- Your toddler’s ability to compare two or more objects by size will build prior knowledge that will allow her to compare two or more objects by other factors (color, texture, speed, weight, etc) that will be useful in further math and science understanding.
- Understanding the concepts of bigger and smaller is a foundation skill for eventually understanding fractions and parts of a whole.
At-Home Activity:
- With your toddler, trace their hand (or foot). Also trace your hand and the hands (or feet) of any other family members, neighbors, or caregivers.
- Either tape the traced hands (feet) on the wall or lay them on the floor. Do so randomly at first.
- Ask your child to find a handprint that is the same size as theirs. Challenge them by asking, “I wonder if you can find a print that is larger/smaller than yours?” You can also ask them to choose a print that they think may be the same size/larger/smaller than yours or other members of the household.
- When your toddler is finished exploring the sizes of the prints, challenge them to line the prints up from smallest to largest or from biggest to smallest. As they do so, guide them by asking “I wonder how we can decide which print to start with?” or “I wonder which print should come next?” As your child works, don’t correct any “mistakes.” Rather, when they’re is finished, look at the order with them and ask if the prints look as though they are lined up from smallest to biggest. Encourage your child to compare each print to observe the different sizes.
More Like This
Recommended for Infants
Materials Needed:
- Several small, interesting toys (rattles, teethers, colorful blocks, shakers)
- Soft blanket
Developmental Goals:
- Promote gross and fine motor development that encourages them to move, reach and stretch.
- Purposeful movement of own bodies.
In the Future:
- Infants need plenty of opportunities to increase their strength and motor development to eventually be able to crawl and then walk.
- Reaching for objects is goal directed behavior; as infants become successful at obtaining objects, it will encourage them to continue to act with purpose.
Activity:
- This activity is appropriate only for infants who are able to support their body weight enough for tummy-time activities.
- Spread the blanket on the floor in an area where he will be protected from other activity in the room.
- Place him on his tummy on the blanket. Show him a toy and describe it to him. Look, (Child’s Name), I have a blue and white rattle.
- Put the toy on the blanket just at arm’s reach from your child so that he has to stretch his arm out to grab it.
- Give him time to shake, mouth and touch the toy.
- When he shows you he is ready for a new experience, place another toy just at arm’s reach for him to grab.
- Encourage him to use the opposite arm by placing the toy within closer reach of the arm he did not previously use.
- Repeat the interaction for as long as your child is interested. Pay particular attention to his activity level. It is hard work for your child to lie on his tummy and reach for toys. You may notice that he is beginning to have a hard time supporting his head and neck, he is no longer reaching for objects, or he has an unhappy look on his face. When your child shows you that he is finished or that his body is getting tired, help him change position so he can rest his muscles.
As you are playing with your baby, consider how he moves his arms and the rest of his body to reach the toy, in what ways does he grasp and manipulate the toy, and how long is he able to attend to his experience.
Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your toddler will compare objects and ask questions to help understand their differences in quantity.
Stay Connected
Sign up to receive news, helpful tools and learn about how you can help our youngest learners.
Materials Needed:
- Two small bowls or boxes of the same size
- Small objects found around the house (hair barrettes, legos, crayons, buttons, keys, coins, toothpicks, clothespins, bracelets, etc.)
Developmental Goals:
- Encourage curiosity and problem solving
- Promote the understanding of more or less in terms of quantity
- Assist in the use of mathematical vocabulary such as more, less, greater than, less than, larger, smaller and same
In the Future:
- The process of making informed guesses about what will happen is a key piece to the process of science that children will need throughout their school life.
- By first understanding the concept of more or less, children are building prior knowledge for the understanding of volume and conservation (that objects don’t change in volume when transferred from one container to another).
Activity:
There are two ways to think about more or less, either looking at objects or containers. For toddlers, it’s best to start with object comparison. Think about the items and ask which container has more or fewer items than the other container?
Thinking About the Objects:
- Give your toddler two containers that are the same size.
- Ask them to pour some of the chosen objects into one container and some into the other.
- Ask them which container they think has more (or fewer) objects?
- As you are playing, encourage your child to investigate by asking, “I wonder if there is another way we can decide which container has more buttons?”
- They can then come up with a strategy on their own, such as lining both sets of objects up, counting each set of objects or stacking each object.
Be sure to keep it fun and act as investigators. There is no need for a “right” answer at this stage. What’s more important is that your toddler is beginning to understand that not all amounts are the same.
More Like This
Recommended for Preschoolers
Materials Needed:
- Not a Box by Antoinette Portis
- Cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, other recycled materials
- Bedsheets or blankets
Developmental Goals:
- Using language to share ideas.
- Using imagination in play.
In the Future:
- Being able to express ideas through language gives young children the opportunity to strengthen their vocabulary and develop their conversational skills.
- Imaginative thinking provides children with opportunities to develop flexible thinking, strengthening their ability to problem solve, which is important when attempting later math and reading problems.
Activity:
- Introduce the book to your child. As with any new book, take time to allow your child to explore the book’s pictures on his own before sitting down to read it out loud.
- As you read the book together, invite him to talk about the different things that the rabbit makes with his cardboard box.
- After reading the story, show your child the recycled materials you have collected. Working together, decide what you will build.
- Allow your child to take the lead, but don’t be afraid to join in and share ideas!
- After the play space is built, ask him to describe what he built.
For older preschoolers: have them use writing tools to record a blue print of what they want to build prior to building. This provides them with the opportunity to analyze, plan and follow through on their ideas.
More Like This
Attachment ─ the security, confidence, and trust that infants and toddlers have with the adults responsible for their care ─ is the framework within which babies develop their growing ability to regulate emotions and behavior. Babies thrive when they are securely attached to their mother, father or primary caregiver who knows and responds consistently and reliably to their unique personalities. Infants and toddlers who are not securely attached are likely to become preschoolers who are unable to control their behaviors and kindergartners who have difficulty engaging in the process of learning.
Recognizing the importance of secure attachment, Start Early implements a continuity of care model in partnership with our network of early learning schools, the Educare Learning Network. This model minimizes the disruptions that children experience by keeping infants and toddlers with the same classroom team of teachers until they transition to preschool.
Secure Attachment
Learn more about the research behind secure attachment and continuity of care.
In this blog post, home visiting expert and former Start Early vice president for training, Janelle Weldin-Frisch, MA, explains the importance of bridging the gap between systems in the home visiting sector through the use of professional development.
Intensive, long-term home visiting services are proven to produce the best outcomes for families and help prepare children for school. Understanding the factors that keep families engaged in these services has given rise to research, training and evolved program requirements. And yet, sustaining family engagement is still often regarded as the primary responsibility of the home visitor. Family engagement is an impossible task alone for even the most highly skilled a home visitor. Strong partnerships at the systems, community and practitioner levels all impact what happens between a family and their home visitor.
At this year’s National Home Visiting Summit, I’ll be sharing a case study of two state leaders that are partnering across systems to strengthen the outcomes of each of their programs. In my session – Bridge Gaps between Systems with Professional Development – I’ll explore how this strategic collaboration can be replicated with other state and system leaders, to improve outcomes across the sector.
Some of the factors impacting family engagement include reliable program funding, competitive salaries for home visitors and supervisors, and access to professional development. With the turnover rate of home visitors exceeding 20% annually, it is critical that system leaders construct a professional development framework to support and retain home visitors and supervisors. In the example shared during the session, we will explore how the two state leaders leveraged a professional development resource – The Essentials of Home Visiting – to develop and implement a PD framework for their home visitors and supervisors. The Essentials of Home Visiting, an online professional development program with unique learning experiences created specifically for home visitors and supervisors, includes self-paced courses, webinars, and tools for supervisors to increase their impact on home visitors, and improve their outcomes with families.
Ensuring that home visiting practitioners have the organizational, supervisory and professional development supports to keep them engaged in the field, are essential factors in promoting family engagement between home visitor and parent.
Janelle Weldin-Frisch, MA, was the vice president for training at Start Early during her twenty-seven year tenure. She continues in a consulting capacity to facilitate a national community of practice for professional development in home visiting, cultivate strategic partnerships and provide state and regional leaders with technical assistance in the use of The Essentials of Home Visiting.
