- drawing and writing materials
- garden
- grow
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Writing/W.PK.MA.2: Use a combination of dictating and drawing to explain information about a topic.
English Language Arts/Language/L.PK.MA.1.f: Demonstrate the ability to speak in complete sentences.
English Language Arts/Language/L.PK.MA.5: With guidance and support from adults, explore world relationships and nuances of word meanings.
Head Start Outcomes:
Literacy Knowledge/Early Writing: Uses scribbles, shapes, pictures, and letters to represent objects, stories, experiences, or ideas.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Composition 16: Use their own words or illustrations to describe their experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information about a topic of interest.
Draw and Write Together: My Garden
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Concepts of Print, Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Invite children to draw a garden. Talk with children about the plants they know in order to help them decide what they would like to grow in their garden.
- Ask them to draw all of the plants they would like to grow in their garden. Say, You can plant all kinds of things in your garden, including flowers, vegetables, trees, bushes, and fruits.
- Take a moment to build on the homonym, flower/flour again by saying, Oh, there’s that word flower again. Are we going to draw the kind of flower we see on a plant or the kind of flour we use to bake or cook?
Once children have finished drawing their gardens, have them dictate a few sentences about what they would need if they were real plants. Ask them questions such as,
- What will your plants need in order to grow in your garden? (water, sunlight, air)
- How will you take care of your garden? (pull weeds, water)
- What will you do with your plants once they are grown?
Encourage children to respond in complete sentences by giving them sentence frames: I will ____ my plants every day (water); I will pull up ____ that grow in the garden (weeds).