Kids' activities with old seed catalogs

I'll always remember the first time my nephew pulled on a carrot stem, and saw a carrot come up from the earth. Amazement! He couldn't believe that he had just pulled a carrot from the ground. Ever since he could toddle around, I have loved showing him all the places where food grows, whether it's berries, edible flowers or something in the garden. He's always loved "helping" in the garden. He spent most of last summer asking me to show him "a plant he's never seen before". Luckily there are lots of options on a hobby farm with a forest, a marsh, and lots of wildflowers.

​To build on this interest, last summer I gave him a seed catalog to look through. Before I knew it, he was taking it to bed every night and looking at the images. He even took it camping. Once it got tattered, I asked members of the local horticultural society for old seed catalogs, and they came through in a big way. Pretty soon my nephew had new catalogs to look through, and we had lots of spares to do activities with. On a cold snowy day, we cut out pictures from catalogs and made collages. We talked about how much we were looking forward to the garden, and how he would have his own little section in the garden this year. He asked what all the different plants were and which ones we could have in our garden.

I gave him scissors and a glue stick, and he did a collage of the plants he wants to have in the garden. For him that mostly meant "plants he's never seen before". Luckily I had ordered seeds for several of these based on past conversations. It was good practice for using scissors and observation skills, too.

​Once he was happy with his “garden” (and a little tired of cutting), we switched gears. I had drawn a rainbow and he looked for plants of all the different colors of the rainbow. I cut out his favorite ones and we pasted them on the rainbow. 

Of course, I had to make my own garden collage, too. I'm sure we'll find lots of other ways to use the seed catalogs.