Gardening is magic. How else can you explain that dropping a tiny seed into dirt eventually results in beautiful flowers and delicious vegetables? Starting a garden in your preschool brings that magic right into your classroom.

Location

Even if your school doesn't have access to open land your class can still garden on a windowsill or in containers, just be sure that your location gets about 6 hours of sun each day. If your school has available land you can plant directly in the ground or use raised beds.

Design

Beds should be laid out with ample, well-marked paths to help keep mud off of shoes and shoes off of plants. It is also important to consider accessibility. In order to be sure that small arms can reach every plant, a bed should be no larger than 3' by 8'.

Plant selection

Often preschoolers have an easier time planting large seeds (beans, peas, squash, sunflowers), but smaller seeds (carrots, spinach) can be mixed with sand and sown from a shaker bottle. Preschoolers are impatient, so try to choose some plants (lettuce, radishes) that will be ready to harvest fairly quickly. Make your garden even more interesting by choosing a theme like planting the rainbow, or a salad garden.

Maintenance

Preschoolers are capable of doing almost any garden chore if they have appropriately sized tools and a bit of supervision. Most of your preschool friends will be happy to water the plants and harvest the fruits of their labor, but weeding isn't fun for anyone. Depending on the size of your garden you may end up doing at least some of the maintenance on your own time, so you may want to start small.

Harvesting

The hardest part of harvesting will be controlling the excitement. Incorporating learning activities like counting, color recognition, or measurement can help to slow the pace and increase mindfulness.

There is no thrill quite like picking a homegrown fruit, vegetable, or flower--unless it is watching a small child discover that gardening really is magic.

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