The surprise garden

Spring is finally here – the sun is shining, birds are chirping, and flowers are in bloom! Now is the perfect time to read some nature-themed books with your child and do some springtime activities!

Our first springtime book is called The Surprise Garden, written by Zoe Hall and illustrated by Shari Halpern.

This book is a great choice for kids ages 2 - 4. In The Surprise Garden, a group of kids are each given a handful of seeds from their mom, and they plant them not knowing what will grow. They care for the seeds, excited to see what surprises will come from them. The seeds eventually grow into a beautiful and colorful collection of fruits, veggies, and flowers! At the end of the book, the kids have a garden party where they eat all of the delicious food they grew.

Here are some activities to get your child to engage with The Surprise Garden:

Prediction Reading

This book is a great tool for getting your child to work on prediction while reading. Ask them to guess what they think will grow in the surprise garden after the characters plant the seeds. This book has beautiful illustrations of the plants that grow, so you can also have your child identify what grew in the garden based on the pictures to see if they predicted correctly. You can also ask them what they would want to grow in their own surprise garden!

Plant your own surprise garden!

After reading this book, your child will most likely want a surprise garden of their own! Get some seeds for different types of flowers, fruits, and vegetables that your child can plant. Make sure not to tell them what’s going to grow, so they can be surprised just like the characters in the book! As the seeds start to sprout, see if your child can guess what the sprouts will become.

Make a sensory garden bin!

Instead of planting a real garden, you could also create one in the form of a sensory bin. The materials you’ll need for this are a medium-sized bin, brown rice, food coloring, toy gardening tools, and small toys or erasers that look like fruits or vegetable. You can find a link to some products for it on Amazon here.

Fill the bin with brown rice to look like soil, throw in some toy gardening tools and your tiny fruits/vegetables, and let your child dig in!

The final result should look something like this!

Make a paper plate garden!

Have your child paint a paper plate to create a backdrop for their garden. Then, they can glue craft materials such as stickers, fake flowers, popsicle sticks, and gems to the plate and create a mini flower garden!

Have a garden party!

Just like the kids in the book, you can have a garden party once your fruits and veggies are done growing in the surprise garden! Set up a table or lay out a picnic blanket outside to eat the fruits and veggies – and this is a great way to get them excited about eating healthy foods!

We hope you enjoy reading The Surprise Garden with your child and doing some fun activities to go along with it! We’ll be back soon with some more Spring-themed installments of Tips for Tots!