My kids are great at helping me in the garden.  We’ve been weeding, adding compost, planting flowers, and adding vegetable starts to the vegetable garden.  Now, if the sun would come out for longer than ten minutes, we’d be happy gardeners!

Lately, I’ve been rotating the kids’ books that we have on display.  I keep a basket of gardening magazines in the corner of our family room. I love to be able to grab some gardening inspiration and start looking for new ideas. This is the place I also displayed a few of my kids’ gardening books. 

I pulled out every book I owned on gardening and added them to the gardening corner.  I have a variety of fiction and non-fiction, easy readers and read-to-me books.  My daughter has been pouring over these books for the past couple of days.  It’s amazing how she chooses to read when the books are displayed, rather than on the bookshelf upstairs.  We are also able to talk about the books and how they relate to our own gardening experiences.  Building SCHEMA (background knowledge and experiences) is so important in early literacy! 

Do you rotate books in and out of display?  Do you have a special place to keep books and are they easily accessible to the youngest family members?  Do the books relate to life experiences?  What topics are your kids interested in? What do you think they might enjoy learning about?

Happy gardening…  and reading!