Right now most of our gardens look a lot like this. Snow and ice is slowly receding to reveal the layer of leaves and sticks that kept the ground just a little bit warmer during the long cold winter. Once that blanket is cleared away, the garden becomes a blank slate, ready for little minds to imagine where flowers and vegetables will be planted. Making seed tape in different shapes and laying them out can be a fun way to plan your garden.
We love homemade seed tape, but sometimes the traditional roll version can make the actual planting of the garden a little harder for young children to visualize, since everything looks the same once it is inside the tape. With this fun take on seed tape, children can make little "presents" for the earth and get to know the shapes and feel of all the different seeds. Although seed tape is traditionally used to help with the planting of tiny seeds, this project can even be fun with larger varieties, and can help children easily differentiate their seeds once it becomes time to plant. It reminds us a bit of the shapes we would cut out for our felt boards as children. Now kids can use the garden to make their designs! Materials: Seeds Chemical-free tissue paper, toilet paper or black and white news paper don't use news paper if there is colored ink on it. Mix 1/4 cup of flour with just enough water to make a paste. Paint brush Scissors
1: Cut out different shapes, you will need a top and bottom. The pieces could be in the shape of the vegetables the seeds will become, or you could cut any other shape that interests you. We cut out heart shapes for our beans because we love beans...
2: Paint the paste on 3: Place 1 to 3 seeds depending on their size. You can always thin when they come up. 4: Cover and let dry 5: Save for planting day
Gardens can be planted in lots of different ways, just make sure to leave a marker unless you know your plant shapes. Pumpkins love to wander through the corn, the fuzzy tops of carrots can create a fairy forests by a bed of lettuce. Have fun with your design! You can plan your garden on your living room floor with your kids using these wonderful seed shapes arranging and rearranging, imagining how big everything will get. Once it is time to put them outside, you can start the fun all over again. If you are looking for some wonderful books about gardening with children, we love this one, and this one is great too!
