Honestly, I hated the actual weeding and tending of the garden due to the bugs and sweat behind my knees as I bent down weeding the garden or picking the veggies... LOL. I sure did enjoy the bounties it brought us though every summer! Fresh veggies for salads (a wilted salad was my favorite, with bacon grease drizzled over top instead of dressing), squash, okra, beans of all sorts, cucumbers for pickles, corn on the cob, and every thing imaginable!
My parents canned everything from sauces, soups, juices, canned veggies, stews, and so much more. Our basement was loaded with foods to feed our family of 7 during the winter months.
I have tried as an adult to grow my own veggies and flower gardens... but I didn't inherited my parents green thumbs! Sure, I knew how to weed the rows and pick the veggies, but the actual scientific part of it (how much sunlight or shade, how much water, fertilization, and all the goes into a healthy garden), I didn't tend to learn.
That's where these amazing books from Usborne Books & More would have been a great resource for me! Now that I have a few of them in my home library, I might have to study up and consider giving gardening a try once again!
Usborne Books & More had gardening books for all ages!
Wipe-Clean Garden Activities is a fun book that allows young children to develop counting, observation, and pen control skills. They follow the lines to see which flower the butterfly will land, connect the dots to finish the snails shell, and draw a line to match the vegetables. Young children need this type of pen control skills BEFORE they can begin to learn to write. This book encourages young children to solve mazes, connect the dots, trace the dotted lines, using the special pen that is provided (if the pen runs dry or is lost, any dry erase pen will work), then wipe it clean, and do it all over again with this fun garden themed activity book.
Pop-up Garden is a fun book for children ages 3 years and up. As you make your way though the garden, discover butterflies and flowers popping up inside the book with this great engineered title. Children will be delighted and fascinated by the beautiful artwork and the many, many surprises this
title has to offer.
Busy Bug Book is a fun, interactive, beautifully illustrated book for your child aged 3 years and up. Pull back the little toy bug and place it on the track and watch it wiggle it's way through the garden.
Peek Inside the Garden is a beautiful book for children ages 3 years and up. A Sunny garden hums, buzzes, creeps, and crawls with life! Peek inside this beautifully illustrated garden and see what can be found.
How Things Grow is a book geared toward the 4 years and up age group. This My First Reference Book about How Things Grow will teach your inquisitive little one how peanuts grow, where seeds come from, which flowers bloom in the spring, and much more! This book is filled with fun quizzes and puzzles to answer your littles one's questions about how things grow.
1,000 Things in Nature Your child aged 6 years and up will be able to discover a natural world full of soaring birds, towering trees, busy bugs, and cozy burrows. This book takes you across jungles, over deserts, through the gardens and under the sea where you can discover 1000 amazing things found in nature! This book will take your child on a journey through different habitats found in the Savannah, the desert, the jungle, under the sea, and even through the mountains! They will discover beautiful illustrations of plants, natural features, and animals of these biomes. It also features "creepy-crawlies", "foods in nature", "rocks, fossils, and gems', and "feathers, eggs, and nests".
In The Wild Garden Children ages 5 and up can decorate the scenes with beautiful rub-downs in this keepsake book that would make a perfect gift from a child to their mom or grandma! There is a card pocket on the inside back cover that contains seven rub-down sheets. Half of each spread is colored, the other half is waiting for your child to finish the masterpiece with his coloring touch and then add the rub-down details This beautiful, interactive book also teaches your child the names of the flowers in the gardens.
Butterflies and Bugs Another beautifully illustrated book ready to be decorated with beautiful rub-downs. This book contains a card pocket on the inside front cover containing eight sheets of rub-down transfers. Half the spread is colored, while the other half has labeled line drawings for your child to add their artistic touch before adding the run-down transfers. This beautiful interactive books will make a perfect keepsake for Mom or Grandma.
Secrets of the Vegetable Garden is from one of Usborne Books & More's top selling series, the Shine-A-Light Series. In this fun interactive book, your child ages 4-8 will discover that a vegetable garden grows under the sun! AND, if they look closely, between the stalks, beneath the leaves, and under the soil, they will discover that animals and plants live there! Hold the pages up to a bright light and discover what hides in and around a vegetable garden. You child will discover a small world full of surprises!
It All Starts With A Seed In the same format as "Big Book of General Knowledge" this book will mix beautiful artsy illustrations with fascinating "Did-You-Knows" to help teach your children how their food grows in nature. Recommended for ages 6 years and up.
How Do Flowers Grow How do flowers grow in hot deserts? How do animals help spread seed? Which flower smells like rotting meat? In this book for children ages 6 years and up, you will find answers to these questions and many more about how flowers grow. "How Flowers Grow" is a book of one of Usborne Books & More's new series of books for children beginning to learn to read on their own. The easy-to-read text was specially written with the help of a reading expert.
When you open Fairy Gardens Magic Painting Book you will discover beautiful, stylish, black and white illustrations. Using the water brush included, brush water over the illustration and see the illustrations change like magic before your eyes! Like a magical rainbow, vibrant colors appear making a beautiful scene come to life! For ages 5 and up...but who are we kidding, adults will love this magic painting books just as much as the kids will!
Gardening For Beginners This book is packed full of gardening projects for beginners. It is recommended for children ages 8 years and up. Clear instructions and step by step illustrations show your child exactly what to do. There are lots of tips showing how to grow plants in pots inside and out and gardening in small spaces. With the title, your child can be growing salad, herbs, vegetables, flowering bulbs, and much, much more!
Book of Growing Food is part of the "Gardening for Beginners" Series but is exclusive to growing edible plants from fruits and vegetables, to mustard and cress, sprouting beans and edible flowers. As with Gardening for Beginners everything can be grown in planters, baskets, or containers on a balcony, patio, or even a window sill. No large garden is needed. This book is recommended for children ages 7 years and up.
I just can't end this post without sharing this fun book written by Eric Ode, one of my favorite Kane Miller Authors! That's the "More" in Usborne Books & More.
Grandfather’s garden
is popping with peas.
It’s buzzing with
blossoms
and bumbly bees.
It’s bursting with
berries
and beans and potatoes
and tall, twining
vines of
too many tomatoes.
Eric Ode's rollicking, rhyming garden story combined with Kent Culotta's exuberant illustrations will have readers tapping their toes (and digging their dirt, and sowing their seeds( as they count the too-many tomatoes overgrowing the garden, the building, the block...and more!
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Note that I am an Usborne Books & More Consultant and that the above article may contain links which direct you to my shopping site where you can purchase the books which I may have highlighted in this article. All purchases made through these links to my shopping site will in return will earn me a commission at no additional expense to you.
