What a fun and useful craft this was for us! We like to plant a few different things year-round and this Planting a Rainbow Inspired Garden Markers Craft help us keep track of what each plant is- from flowers to veggies.
Besides being handy for marking your plants it also gives kids some extra fine motor practice and a fun art project as well. We took our inspiration from Lois Ehlert’s book Planting a Rainbow.
Planting a Rainbow Garden Markers
Here is what you will need:
- Jumbo craft sticks
- Small alphabet stickers
- Fine tipped markers
You may want to spread out some newspaper, a cheap plastic shower curtain, or a messy mat-this is what we use for paint and other messy projects. It makes clean up much easier.
Provide your child with a paint brushes and rainbow of paint for their craft sticks.
Demonstrate for them how to paint each one a different color to create a rainbow or paint the rainbow colors on each one. Most kids don’t need much prompting they love messy crafts!
Allow the paint to dry thoroughly on your paint markers, this is the hardest part for little ones, the waiting. This is a good time to read the book and get your plants or seeds ready to plant.
Once your base color is completely dry decide what each color will represent.
Lightly pencil on the words-peonies, roses, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, chives, etc… This will help your child with spelling and also letter placement, older children can do this on their own.
Let your child use small letter stickers to spell out each item.
If desired draw or paint on small plants to represent your flowers, veggies or herbs. A cute little thumb makes for great tomatoes, pumpkins, and other round fruits. Allow to dry well.
Finally, once everything is dry and set give your plant markers a couple coats of clear poly spray to help them last through the entire season.