Gardening with young children often involves hands digging in the soil, tiny seeds sprouting, and watering cans tipping carefully to drench thirsty plants. This engaging springtime activity teaches meaningful lessons on patience, caretaking, and food production.
But what if your garden could do more than grow plants?
This activity, designed for children ages 3 to 6, will fill your garden beds with clues and materials that fuel critical thinking, collaboration, and curiosity while supporting literacy and math development. Whether your garden beds are bursting with life or waiting to be planted, this hands-on mystery will help children connect with the natural world while practicing essential skills they’ll use throughout life.
With over 50 years of experience in early childhood education, Kaplan recognizes the value of classroom activities that are grounded in research and align with educational best practices. The activity in this article is inspired by the Gryphon House books Simple STEAM: 50+ Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math Activities for Ages 3 to 6, Dig In: Outdoor STEM Learning with Young Children, and Loose Parts Alive: Inspiring Child-Led Nature Explorations, as well as the Pre-K curriculum Connect4Learning®.
This activity is great for morning circle time discussions, large group outdoor play, and small group or individualized lessons.
This activity invites children to solve a gardening mystery using clues such as seed packets, plant seedlings, plant tags, magnifying glasses, and anything else you have on hand. Children must use their investigation, problem-solving, and collaboration skills to determine which plants they will grow in their garden and where those plants should be planted so they have the best chance of producing flowers and/or food.
Before you introduce children to this gardening mystery, host a large group discussion about plant life cycles, basic plant needs regarding sunlight and water, plant growth, and the benefits of gardening. During this discussion, mention any specific plants children may grow or observe in your garden. Books such as Our Community Garden by Barbara Pollak and The Life Cycle of a Bean by Linda Tagliaferro can help facilitate this discussion.
Explain to children that gardens are full of wonder and change. With the right amount of care and attention, a small seed will turn into a productive, thriving plant that adds beauty and/or sustenance to the world. Conversations and activities focusing on plants, gardening, and earth can help children:
Once you conclude your gardening discussion, it is time to set the stage for your mystery. Place “clues” in your designated gardening spaces. These clues could be seed packets, containers with seedlings, plant identification cards, garden labels with only a beginning letter of the plant they identify, sunlight clues (e.g., “This plant likes a little shade”), and plant size clues (e.g., “This plant grows big and tall”). Introduce the activity to young children by mentioning that someone left clues in your garden, but they are mixed up and require their help to determine where each plant will grow best.
Have the children gather around the edge of your designated garden spaces and observe the clues before them. Split the children into pairs or small groups and give each group one plant information card. They must then work in their pairs or small groups and match the seed packets and/or seedlings with a plant identification tag, sunlight clue, and plant size clue using the plant information card for reference. An example of an appropriate match would be:
To help the children match clues appropriately, use prompts such as:
Once all the clues are collected and appropriately matched, it is time to solve the mystery of where each plant should grow in the garden. Again, have children work together in pairs or small groups to measure the size of your garden space. Then, using their clues and measurements, prompt children to hypothesize where each plant belongs in your garden bed and why. If it helps, use a sheet of paper or a large chart pad to draw your garden layout and plant location suggestions.
Some questions you can ask the children to encourage critical thinking as they design your garden space might include:
“This plant grows 12” tall. Should it go in front of or behind the tall corn stalks?”Once you create your garden layout, have the children work together to plant, water, and care for the seeds and/or seedlings. Keep the detective work going by asking the children to hypothesize how long each plant will take to sprout and produce a flower, fruit, or vegetable. Observe the garden daily to track the growth process.
While children will already get an introduction to basic math concepts while participating in the activity as it is above, you can make adaptations to better support the learning needs of those in your care. One way to do this is by sectioning your garden bed into one-foot squares before the activity starts. On your seed or seedling information cards, include the quantity of each plant that will fit in a one-foot by one-foot square. Children can count, add, and subtract seeds, seedlings, and measurements to achieve appropriate spacing in the garden bed.
There are several ways to facilitate literacy skill development during this activity. Children can recognize and sound out the letters on the plant identification tags before pairing them with seeds or seedlings. You can also encourage each child to write the full name of each plant on the identification tag. For older children, encourage their storytelling skills by asking them to describe the lifecycle of specific flowers or vegetables that are growing in the garden.
The fun of this garden detective activity does not need to end once the seeds and seedlings are in the ground. As the plants grow and mature, there are even more mysteries for young children to discover and solve. Host a large group discussion and read books such as In the Garden: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George or The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The extended version of Garden Detectives will encourage children to investigate and figure out which insect or animal is wreaking havoc in the garden.
Plants with insect damage or garden spaces with visible disturbances in the dirt are perfect places for children to observe and study. They can use magnifying glasses to get an up-close look at each plant to see if they witness any insects munching and crunching on their leaves. Bring notepads or blank paper along so the children can draw and write about their observations.
This activity was inspired by the Gryphon House books Simple STEAM: 50+ Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math Activities for Ages 3 to 6, Dig In: Outdoor STEM Learning with Young Children, and Loose Parts Alive: Inspiring Child-Led Nature Explorations, as well as the Pre-K curriculum Connect4Learning®.
These resources offer more activity suggestions to help children build problem-solving, collaboration, critical thinking, math, and literacy skills.
This activity offers hands-on learning experiences that help children gain a deeper appreciation of nature while improving their literacy and math development. Use it as inspiration while you plan weekly lessons, and feel free to make changes to better suit the needs of the children in your care.
Make sure you download a PDF version of this article to quickly and easily refer to the materials, activity details, and extension opportunities.