Bring the garden indoors with this playful craft! Kids can design their own mini garden by cutting up seed catalogs, magazines, or printable clip art. Perfect for cold, dreary days, this imaginative activity inspires creativity while keeping little ones entertained for hours.
This project requires few materials and is great for family craft time.
Read through the project then gather the materials needed for making the garden. If you don't have any seed catalogs, check with neighbors and family, or use magazines with pictures of flowers. You could also go online and search for images of garden plants to download and print. For younger children, you might also want to pre-cut the slots in the shoebox.
Try searching online with these easy phrases to find suitable printable options:
For best results, refine your search with terms like 'high resolution,' 'free to use,' or 'colorful images.' Many websites and image platforms offer these resources for free!
Take your seed catalogs and magazines, or other pictures, and have the kids cut out the flowers that they like. For a vegetable garden, cut out vegetables and fruits.
This is the time to plan your garden. Do you want flowers of one or two colors, or a full range of colors? What vegetables will you plant?
Glue the cutouts onto craft sticks or popsicle sticks. Tip: If the picture's paper is thin or flimsy, glue the cutout to a scrap of white paper or cardstock before gluing it to the stick.
Decide whether you will use the top or the bottom of the shoe box for your garden. Use the tips of your scissors to cut slits in the shoe box. Make the slits slightly smaller than the width of the craft stick, and arrange them in rows or randomly. Tip: Start with just a few slits, and add more as you plant the garden.
To plant your garden, insert the sticks with the cutouts into the slits. Arrange them anyway you like. Adjust the height of each plant by how far you insert it into the shoe box. Try different arrangements. Use your imagination. It's fun to plant and then harvest, and plant again.
Tip: When you are done playing, store your plants in the shoe box for another day of gardening fun!
That's it! Your garden it ready for planting!
Tip: Make a garden with vegetable and fruit cutouts.
This garden uses a small shipping box instead of a shoe box.
Tip: Cut out more images than needed, then sort through them for your favorites. You can also keep them to change the images on the craft sticks.
