Kids Garden Activities that 'Dig into Reading'

Favorite Kids Books & Garden Activities

Gardening isn't just about growing vegetables -- there's all the fun of worms & insects, beautiful flowers, teaching kids about the responsibility of caring for something, helping them learn about the lifecycle of a plant and connecting kids with nature.

If it's not quite planting season in your area, browse these Get Ready for Garden Season: 30 Crafts & Activities that kids will enjoy as they get ready to plant those seeds.

If you're ready to start planting, we have some fun ideas that will encourage kids to explore the science behind gardening and pick up a few new books as they learn to be junior gardeners! We're including affiliate links for the books we recommend and items that will make gardening season fun & easy.

Happy Birthday Author is an awesome book & activity site! The have dozens of ideas for great projects that pair up with kid books.

For gardening, they matched The Curious Garden with this fun craft of creating your own watering cans. Small Metal Watering Cans are easy to find at craft stores or on Amazon. I just love this art project because it really allows kids to get creative and excited about taking care of their plants!

Little Wonders' Days created a wonderful Sensory Garden for kids by planting some wonderful herbs!

Growing herbs is always a fun activity for kids and there such a variety. Try these 12 popular Easy-to-Grow Culinary Herb Seeds.

Herb plants usually grow quickly, can be used in the kitchen when cooking meals and they have a wonderful smell! Use this free printable How Fast Does My Plant Grow? as a fun way to track the plant's height and growth.

I would pair this activity with Kid's Herb Book, A: For Children of All Ages to share all the different ways herbs are used. The book includes some fun recipes along with kid-friendly activities.

Teach Beside Me shared some excellent Tips for Gardening with Kids and ways to really get kids involved in the gardening process.

They also paired the tips with 12 Fun Books about Seeds including a few of our favorites -- From Seed to Plant and Oh Say Can You Seed?: All About Flowering Plants (Cat in the Hat's Learning Library) - both great books that explain the process of seeds growing into plants.

For the Children introduced us to the world under the garden - Worms, snails & slugs!

It's important for kids to understand that you can't just put a plant in the ground and expect it to grow. There are many insects and small animals that help the soil and plant to thrive!

Pair some observation of these fun creatures with books such as

And The Educator's Spin on It linked up a few great posts on how to grow root vegetables!

Growing carrots can be a little tricky and take a while but is certainly worth the work! We have tried carrots in our garden and they are pretty fun to grow and the kids loved to harvest them -- it's a little surprise each time you pull one from the ground.

If you'd like to actually SEE the carrots grow, try this Garden Root Viewer growing kit where the kids can see what grows underground!

While waiting for your carrots to grow, the kids would enjoy reading a few fun carrot books:

If your kids are interested in where seeds come from, try

dissecting a flower and learning about pollination .

And be sure to stop by Fantastic Fun & Learning to see some of the cool science-related garden ideas that are being featured too.

Original article and pictures take http://www.kcedventures.com/blog/library-summer-reading-garden-ideas-for-kids site