Growing your own food can happen anywhere. From a small planter on the window sill to tilling the soil in your yard. Personally, I enjoy a mixture of pots and raised planters. Hardware stores with garden centers or Greenhouses are great resources to help you get started. I use pots for large root vegetables, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and for herbs that will take over the yard like mint or lemon balm. Trust me on the lemon balm! My son convinced me to put it in my raised planter several years ago and I am still regularly pulling it out because it is trying to overrun my carrots, strawberries, and melons.

At my former child care, spring was full of garden planning. I love how easy it was to incorporate a variety of different math explorations into growing food we would eat for our snacks or lunch. First we would count the number of pots that would be used for vegetables/fruits compared to flowers. Then, the seed packets were spread out on the table and the children voted on which ones they wanted to grow. There were a limited number of pots, so we could not plant all of the seeds. Peas, beans, and carrots were some of the favorites.  My family liked large tomatoes but the preschoolers did not until I introduced both cherry and pear varieties. These quickly became an annual favorite. Their small size, fun shape, sweet taste, and quick growing was intriguing to them. They would spend time during the day counting the yellow flowers and green tomatoes talking about how many they would eat.

After cleaning, the group would decide how many tomatoes each person would get to eat. This was a great way to explore the concepts of division and “fair”. Anyone with young children can validate that children will quickly notice if you have more than they do. This also gave us the chance to explore fractions in a fun and engaging way. When there was not an even amount, which happened often, we would cut up the remaining tomatoes so that everyone would have a piece. This gave me the opportunity to talk with the children about fractions, such as ½, ⅓ , and ¼. Cutting a cherry or pear tomato into 1/4ths takes some practice! There is a great trick that you can use with two plates to cut large groups in ½ quickly. Click here to watch! There was a great deal of counting and recounting to make sure everyone had the same amount. Then the feast would begin.

Many years later I had a family of my own with two young boys, two cats, and a dog. From the time the boys were able to carry things steadily, they were encouraged to help with the feeding. They would count out the number of scoops of dry food or treats for the dog. The cats would get an occasional treat of a ¼ of the cat food can. Some days it was more like a ⅓ but they were learning. Now they are adults with pets of their own. Jason has a beautiful Rottweiler, Bailey, and Derek a feisty Border Collie mix named Thor.

In his youth Derek had explored the idea of being a chef and briefly owned a catering business along with publishing a cookbook. Before moving to a different career path he decided to publish a children’s book that would focus on the peanut butter puppy treats that he made for Thor. Together we collaborated on a book that I could use when teaching my early childhood curriculum class. The book touched on concepts from both science and math. We took inspiration from the book, Thunder Cake by P. Polacco regarding creating a story that would also incorporate a cooking activity.

In Polacco’s book a young girl collects the ingredients to make a cake all while overcoming her fear of the impending thunderstorm. As she put together the ingredients for the cake she counted the number of eggs and tomatoes needed. Yes, I said tomatoes and the recipe is quite good and worth the effort.

In Derek’s book his dog Thor wants to eat people food which is not good for him. So he selects the peanut butter treats recipe from the cookbook and helps Derek to make the treats. There are a variety of different simple measuring and counting activities throughout the book and in the end Thor enjoys his treat. We decided to add a couple of pages in the back of the book to discuss the importance of owning a dog and some fun expansion activities. The treats are quick and easy to make. Every time we make them all the dogs come running.

Cooking is a great way to connect with others, learn life skills along with exploring science and math. Home cooks regularly double and half recipes depending on the number of people they are going to feed. Sometime cooks  need to calculate a different cooking time depending on the humidity and elevation. Having extra little hands helping out may slow down the process, but children will be gaining an understanding of measurement in a more meaningful way than simple paper and pencil tasks that they may experience in school.

In my area, starting in June, there are several farmers markets that offer a wide variety of seasonal goodies to take home. Everything from fresh fruits and vegetables, to canned jams and pickled garlic, to pints of honey. It is an explosion of different flavors and textures for the taste buds. Though many vendors will take credit cards several of them still prefer the old fashion method of paying with cash. This can lead to a wonderful opportunity for children to learn about how currency is used for exchanged.

My boys enjoyed visiting the farmers market in their youth both locally and wherever we traveled. We would gather some loose change from around the house then stop by the local bank to get some dollar bills, mostly one’s and five’s to make it easy for counting. On Main Street we would visit the different vendors to check out all of the yummy items offered. Larger items such as watermelons we would leave that until the end of the shopping, though reflecting back we should have learned from some of the other families and simply brought our little red wagon.

When we would find something that looked tasty, there would be a discussion about the price to make sure that we had enough money and whether we wanted to spend that much. We encouraged the boys to count out the amount of dollars and cents needed to purchase the item. Mathematical concepts such as addition and subtraction were practiced in this fun and interactive manner. We all got to interact with other people and the boys were able to satisfy their hunger…and…for anyone with young children,  you know this can be a leading factor in many decisions. These interactions helped to bring the abstract concept of large numbers, 100/500/1000, into the real world for them because these numbers simply became $1/$5/$10. Quarters, dimes, and nickels were quickly added to figure out how to make change.

Some activities to try before venturing out into the Farmers Market are:

• Practice exchanging coins. Start out simple with exchanging pennies for nickels, dimes and quarters.
• Move up to creating different ways to exchange the coins for a dollar.
• Model the use of cash when possible while shopping for small purchases.
• Think about simple games that you can play using coins.
• If you child has a piggy bank full of coins offer to exchange them for larger coins and dollar bills.

Helping children how to understand the impact of money will assist them in making wise purchases as they grow into adults. Both of my boys, now adults, are very comfortable with handling currency because they were able to explore this concept in a real world situation that was in a low risk atmosphere where they interacted with adults who supported their exploration of money.

This was a great exploration activity for me regarding early counting skills. We would count the number of holes. Then go out to the flower beds to find that number of different types of flowers to cut and bring inside. As I placed the flower stems into the holes I  my understanding of numbers and one-to-one correspondence developed in a positive way. There were not red marks on a paper if I had the wrong amount, simply extra flowers that would need a different vase. Sometime there would be too few and together we would figure out how many more were needed. This type of self correction made it easy for me to understand the one-to-one relationships between the number of holes and the number of flowers

I spent many hours arranging and then re-arranging flowers in the frog. The number of flowers always remained the same when I filled up all of the holes.  As a young child this surprised me because young children are starting to learn that the number of items remain the same even when you rearrange item in several different ways.

From the time I opened my child care until it closed, there were at least 2 flower pots with flower plants in the outside play area. This allowed for a wide variety of exploration and discussion. Some of the favorite activities that the children completed were:

• Counting seeds, creating a hole in the dirt, placing a seed, then covering it up.
• Measuring out the water that would be given to the plant in a plastic measuring cup.
• Marking on the calendar the days that we watered the flowers and the days where the soil was moist so we did not need to.
• Placing a ruler next to the plant and noticing how much it grew over the days.
• Counting the number of flowers and buds.
• Comparing the number of petals or size of the different flowers.

Another benefit for this type of learning about math is that flower pots helps children to connect with nature in a meaningful way. They begin to understand the cycle of living things and what plants need in order to thrive. Children have the ability to explore in an environment that supports their growing minds. Plus there is the added benefit of being able to bring some beautiful colors and smells into the home.

Flower gardens are easy to grow in almost any climate. I live in what is call a High Desert where there is limited rain, an average of 300 days of sunshine, surrounded by mountains, with temperatures that can fluctuate over 20 degrees from the hottest to coldest part of the day, and the town sits at 4,500 feet above sea level. The key to success is to talk with your local Extension Office or Garden Center to see what grows best in your area. Note: It is important to consider the spread of the plant as some can quickly spread when planted in the ground. I had mint one year that spread into the lawn and roses…… but oh it smelled amazing.