DIY Homeschooler

You don’t have to wait until spring to get your children involved in gardening!  A Little Garden Calendar by Albert Bigalow Paine is a beautifully illustrated living book arranged by calendar months of the year that brings even the youngest children along in maintaining their garden month by month — beginning in January!

The author has tried to tell in simple language a few of the wonders of plant life, and to set down certain easy methods of observation, including planting, tending, and gathering the harvests, from month to month, throughout the year….

Simple botany plays a part in the little narrative which forms a continuous story from chapter to chapter, interwoven with a number of briefer stories — traditions, fairy tales, and the like, all relating to plant life and origin.

Young children, especially, will enjoy mimicking Prue and Davy’s actions — planting their own seeds, watching for the sprouts, and along the way learning about the following topics:

• The way to properly handle delicate plants.
• The members of different plant families.
• Various plant vines.
• Root vegetables.
• The importance of sunlight.
• Pollination.
• Transplanting.
• Ants, aphids, and other insects.
• Weeding.
• Fruits.
• Three principle parts of a plant.
• Flowers.
• Leaves.
• Moss, ferns, molds, and fungi.
• Seeds and nuts.
• Annuals and perennials.

The December chapter contains several verses or poems helpful for remembering what was learned throughout the year.

A Little Garden Calendar is a delightful complement to our free nature studies — Our Wonderful World — and it’s free!

Free eBook

• Read online
• PDF
• Various formats (EPUB, Kindle)

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Additional Resources

Free Nature Studies: Our Wonderful World
Covering insects, animals, birds, and more — the plant section begins with Lesson XI.