Welcome to our PreK Plant Unit, where you will find everything you need to plant seeds of curiosity in your little learners’ minds and watch their knowledge grow!
With hands-on activities, colorful crafts, and magical moments of discovery, we’ll explore everything from learning about what makes a seed grow to building flower pots to plant our seeds. Get ready to dig in, get a little messy, and have a whole lot of fun as we nurture a love for nature in our preschoolers. Now, let’s get growing!
Plant Lessons for Preschool
At the center of each plant activity inside this unit, you will find a detailed lesson plan. Each plant lesson provides step-by-step instructions on how to implement each plant-themed activity.
So, even if you have never used a STEM project for preschoolers or are unsure how to connect plants to math and literacy, we have you covered!
In addition to the lesson plans provided, you will find everything you need to quickly and easily set up each activity (except a few easy-to-find materials for the STEM activity). This includes things like ready-to-use signs for stations and centers as well as plant worksheets for students to write on in the plant read aloud.
The only thing you need to do? Choose whether you want to use the digital or print version of each activity and assign it to students.
Plant Activities for Preschool
While there are several fun spring themed lessons for preschool, plant themed lessons are some of our favorites. Why? Because they create experiences for students to connect their learning in the classroom with the world they see outside every day.
Below, you will find the various plant activities we created for every subject area. This includes plant themed exploration stations, plant themed math and literacy activities, plant circle time activities, and even a plant themed STEM project!
From the first seed of knowledge you plant at the beginning, to the last seed of knowledge at the end of this unit, your preschoolers’ knowledge will grow at every level with this unit.
Plant Unit Exploration Stations
Preschoolers love their independence, which is why we love Exploration Stations! Exploration stations are the perfect activity to foster independence in early learners because they invite kids to manage themselves and their learning as they explore each activity.
While preschoolers are excited about the independence provided through Exploration Stations, they still need guidance. Therefore, all the materials are color-coded and have visual icons that match the instruction cards and work boards. All you need to do is print and assemble these signs at each station to help guide your preschoolers through their exploration of plants. Then, give each student one of the pre-made checklists to guide them through each activity.
Here is a quick look at the different stations and what students will explore at each one:
- Explore: Explore and read the pages then design a garden.
- Color: Use the code to color the pictures.
- Match: Pick a card and match the seed to its movement.
- Make: Use play dough to make the item on the mat.
- Dot: Use cotton swabs to dot paint the picture on the card.
- Clip: Clip the picture to show if it is a plant.
- Solve: Connect the pieces to solve the plant lifecycle puzzle.
- Write/Draw: Draw or write what you know about plants.
Taste: Try different plants and mark how they taste.
If you are new to using stations in your classroom, remember that we have provided detailed lesson plans for each station. Even though you will find detailed lesson plans, that doesn’t mean there isn’t flexibility in how you implement these stations.
For example, you get to choose how these stations best fit within your daily and weekly class schedule. You can put all the stations in one area where it is easy to manage the learning of all students or you can distribute stations at different locations around the room. In addition, you may choose to have these Exploration Stations be a focus activity for the day – where every student visits every station in one day.
Plant Themed Math and Literacy Centers
Another type of station, or center, that is commonly used in preschool classrooms are math and literacy centers. Just like Exploration Stations, math and literacy centers provide opportunities for young children to engage in hands-on learning.
At first thought some may wonder how to make connections between plants and math; however, we bet as a preschool teacher you have learned that any theme can be turned into math! All it takes is using plants to review math concepts like counting, number recognition, patterns, 2d shapes, measurement, writing numbers, number recognition, and graphing.
For example, having students count seeds or match the correct number with how many plants they see in an image. Below are eight ways we created for kids to make connections between math and the magical world of plants.
- Number Garden: Count and Match
- Count and Clip: Count to 12
- Planting Seeds: Represent Numbers
- How Tall: Flower Height Measurement
- Number Recognition: Count and Subitize
- Garden Worms: Sort by Length
- What Comes Next: Plant Patterns
- Forest of Trees: Draw 2D Shapes
Just like math, literacy skills such as rhyming, letter recognition, counting syllables, letter writing, initial sounds, upper and lowercase recognition, fine motor, name writing, and free writing can all be connected to plants. This makes it easy to create literacy centers for preschoolers to review their reading and writing skills while still learning about plants.
Here is a quick look at the 10 plant themed literacy centers we created for your preschoolers:
- Flower Garden: Alphabet Order
- Busy Bees: Initial Consonant Sounds
- Cactus Plants: Puzzle Rhymes
- Planting Seeds: Uppercase and Lowercase
- Plants We Eat: Identifying Syllables
- Spin a Flower: Counting and Fine Motor
- Plant Writing: Free Write Center
- Plant a Name: Letters in Order
- Springtime Flower: On My Own Craft
- Flowers in a Pot: Color Sorting
Similar to Exploration Stations, each of these math and literacy activities has detailed lesson plans but still provides plenty of flexibility in how you use them in your classroom.
The Tiny Seed PreK Read Aloud
While stations and centers are exceptional learning opportunities for young children, there is also a need for whole-class learning. One of the best ways to engage preschoolers in whole class learning is through reading. Specifically, through a read aloud.
With comprehension questions that invite students into the book before they even open it, and continue to engage them after the last word, read alouds are essential for preschoolers. This is why we do our best to create PreK read alouds for a variety of topics – like plants!
As an early education teacher, you are probably familiar with Eric Carle and his phenomenal books. While his famous book The Hungry Caterpillar is an all-time favorite, we also love The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.
This picture book includes the same phenomenal artwork and words that you are familiar with in The Hungry Caterpillar. However, this particular book tells a wonderful story of a Tiny Seed that is a perfect pairing for a plant themed unit.
As with all the resources we have shared above, this PreK read aloud comes complete with detailed lesson plans to guide you through 3-5 days of reading lessons. Below is a brief overview of the types of lessons you can choose from for each day.
- Comprehension questions
- Whole group response to text activities
- Response to text worksheets
- Informational Text
- Writing pages
- Vocabulary cards and worksheets
- Quiz
- Craftivity template
Plant Themed Circle Time
The preschool day wouldn’t be complete without proper circle time! So of course we created a plant themed circle time resource to use throughout this unit.
This plants themed preschool circle time provides fun, engaging, and educational activities for every day of the unit – including a song and poem!
Developed to build positive relationships while introducing important academic and social skills as classmates sit together in a whole group, this circle time resource goes beyond just singing and teaching kids about plants. Therefore, helping to build a positive classroom community while reviewing academic skills.
Curious about what types of group activities are included in this plant themed circle time? Here’s a quick peek!
- 2 reread/review the text activities
- 3 responding to text activities
- song lyrics with a familiar tune + 2 corresponding activities
- pocket chart poem + 2 corresponding activities
- 3 game-style whole class activities
- 5 corresponding independent worksheets
- 1 emergent reader
Prek Plant Project
In this culminating activity for your plant unit, students will get to engage in a hands-on activity designed to engage their tactile skills and critical thinking skills. This engaging STEM activity for preschoolers begins with a problem: You want to plant a beautiful spring flower, but you don’t have a pot to put it in.
To solve the problem, students will move through a series of exploration activities. This begins with first learning about what makes a good pot. To help your preschoolers learn what makes a good flower pot, they will begin by reading an informational, Good Pots for Plants, with you as a whole class activity.
In addition to the informational text, students can learn more by using the QR codes included in the lesson plan. These QR codes will take kids to short videos that provide mini-lessons on How to Make a Pinch Pot and How to Repot a Plant. Beyond these lessons, students get to develop language around the activity with new vocabulary words.
Once students have explored what is needed to build a pot they get to start creating! After the fun of creating the pot, students return to their critical thinking skills to reflect on their pot.
While we have provided most of the materials needed to implement this STEM project, it still requires a few additional materials. We have included a list of material recommendations, but we also created this project with the preschool classroom in mind. This means that most craft their flower pot to help a plant grow.
To make it easy to implement this unit in your classroom, you can purchase everything above in one easy to buy bundle. However, you can also pick and choose which lessons are best suited for your preschool classroom. Whether you choose to use every lesson or only a few, we are excited to be part of the water that helps your little learners’ knowledge grow and bloom!
