Developed in partnership with Education Services Australia

Getting your child to help grow plants can be a great way to nurture your child's interest in science and healthy eating. These ideas will nurture their literacy and numeracy skills at the same time:

• read the plant labels together, and ask your child what they think the symbols mean
• talk about your own gardening experience, and how this compares with labels
  
  The label said to put those plants in full sun, but in our garden, I've found that they grow well in light shade.
• ask your child to make their own plant labels, or record your plantings in a book
  
  Let's draw a picture of each plant and write the name and location underneath.
• if you have plants arranged in rows, ask your child to count them
  
  Let's see, how many rows of seedlings did we plant? How many in each row? So how many did we plant in total?
  
  I wonder if we could arrange the same number of plants in a different number of rows. What do you think?
• encourage your child to take photographs of the plants each week, and describe what has changed
• count the new shoots, flowers, fruits (or snails!) on one plant, and estimate how many there are in total
• make predictions about how many new shoots (or flowers etc) there will be in the next week, and then check!

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