Spray the Alphabet Garden for Toddlers

For our Weekly Virtual Book Club this Week we are talking about all things GARDENS! It is Garden Week and we will be exploring flower gardens and vegetable gardens and embedding some simple garden themed learning activities into our days as well.

There are so many different types of gardens. "A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature." (source)

Today we are sharing a simple flower chalk garden activity that helps kids learn to recognize alphabet letters!

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As we learn about gardens this week, we will be reading some simple children's books about them too. The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle is our featured book for the week. In The Tiny Seed, Eric Carle shares all about the life cycle of a flower.

Using the flower theme, we adapted our popular "Watering an alphabet garden" activity and changed it to a squeeze or spray the alphabet garden activity.

MATERIALS NEEDED TO SPRAY THE ALPHABET GARDEN

spray bottle or squeeze bottle
Book: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
water
chalk
flat outdoor surface (or chalkboard)

HOW TO DO OUR SPRAY THE ALPHABET GARDEN ACTIVITY

To set up this activity, you need to have your child first draw some chalk flowers. If your kids don't want to draw the flowers or are too young, you can draw them for them.

Next, add alphabet letters inside each flower.

Once the chalk flowers are created, hand your child a spray bottle or squeeze bottle with water. Say the name of an alphabet letter and encourage your child to spray the letter that is called.

This is such a simple way to work on letter identification. If your kids already can identify the letters, try saying the letter sound and see if they can spray the correct letter associated with that sound! This helps your child practice two different important skills needed for understanding the alphabet.

Once the flowers are all washed away, draw a new alphabet garden and try again!

WAYS TO THIS ACTIVITY ADAPT FOR OLDER KIDS

For older kids who already know how to identify letters and sounds, write words on each flower and have them practice simple sight words or other words that they need help reading.

Having the squeeze bottles is so motivating! My kids love reading when they get to squirt the words!

After you're done spraying the chalk alphabet, your kids can go and spray your actual garden too... even if it is a bunch of weeks. My kids love watering our rockrose.

MORE SIMPLE GARDEN LEARNING ACTIVITIES

You can find more simple garden themed activities from our weekly virtual book club co-hosts and on our Toddler Approved blog. Here are a few for you to try out this week! Click on each link below for the full tutorial.

Go here for 14 of our favorite Garden themed activities!