Gardening Lab For Kids: 52 Fun Experiments To Learn, Grow, Harvest, Make, Play, And Enjoy Your Garden (Lab For Kids (24))

Gardening Lab For Kids: 52 Fun Experiments To Learn, Grow, Harvest, Make, Play, And Enjoy Your Garden (Lab For Kids (24))

A refreshing source of ideas to help your children learn to grow their own patch of earth, Gardening Lab for Kids encourages children to get outside and enjoy nature. This fun and creative book features 52 plant-related activities set into weekly lessons, beginning with learning to read maps to find your heat zone, moving through seeds, soil, composting, and then creating garden art and appreciating your natural surroundings. Author Renata Fossen Brown guides your family throughfun activities that are also lessons?bout botany, ecology, the seasons, food, patience, insects, eating, and cooking. Have fun exploring:pollinators by making a pollinator palace out of bricks, sticks, twigs, bamboo, and pegboard.the basic elements of soil-sand, silt, and clay-by testing how well your soil drains with just a shovel, water, ruler, and timer.color theory by creating a table top color wheel from different colored annuals.native birds?y making a bird feeder from an old picture frame and piece of screen.Gardening?ab for Kids is the perfect book for creative families, friends, and community groups and works as lesson plans for both experienced and new gardeners. Children ofall ages and experience levels can be guided by adults and will enjoy these engaging exercises. So, slip on your muddy clothes, and get out and grow! The popularLab for Kids series features a growing list of books that share hands-on activities and projects on a wide host of topics, including art, astronomy, clay, geology, math, and even how to create your own circus-all authored by established experts in their fields. Each lab contains acomplete materials list, clearstep-by-step photographs of the process, as well asfinished samples. The labs can be used as singular projects or as part of a yearlong curriculum of experiential learning. The activities are open-ended, designed to be explored over and over, often with different results. Geared toward being taught or guided by adults, they are enriching for a range of ages and skill levels. Gain firsthand knowledge on your favorite topic with Lab for Kids.Amazon.com ReviewLabToads (and their close relatives, frogs) are very important for the ecosystem. Both animals? main diet consists of insects, many of which are pests to food crops,such as aphids or slugs. Wouldn?t it be great to attract them to your yard to keep an eye on your garden?Materials10? (25 cm) clay potPaintsPaint brushesClear polyurethaneSealerTrowelFig. 1: Decorate the pot, let dry, add sealer, and let dry.1. Paint some fun designs on the clay pot and let it dry. Apply the sealer and let dry overnight. (Fig. 1)2. Find a shady, out-of-the-way location in your garden for your toad abode. Using the trowel, dig a slight depression the soil so that when you lay the pot on its side, it won?t roll around. (Fig. 2)3. Lay the pot on its side in the depression you dug. Fill the area around the pot with soil so that the pot will stay in place.Fig. 2: Dig a small area for the pot.DIG DEEPER! If you aren?t seeing frogs or toads in your neighborhood when there should be some around, there could be something wrong. Lawn chemicals, pollution, or acid rain could be some of the reasons. Both frogs and toads are amphibians, and are key indicators of a healthy environment. Why? Because they breathe and absorb water through their skin! If the environment is polluted, they ingest those pollutants, which can kill them or prevent them from reproducing. Healthy toads, Healthy environment.Review"This fun collection of DIY activities - or gardening 'experiments,' as the author calls them - ranges from building rain barrels and gardening tool boxes to making a desert terrarium or growing a tropical porch container. My kids were immediately drawn to the projects in this book; my daughter has big plans for the fairy garden, and my son wants to make a sprinkler. And we're al