Welcome to Mrs. Mouse's Garden

Kid's Valley Garden
Lots of tips and ideas for kids interested in gardening. Learn all about planning a garden, planting,...

University of Illinois -
The Great Plant Escape

The Children's Butterfly Site

Composting for kids
A scripted slide set written and produced by Robert E. (Skip) Richter, CEA-Horticulture, Travis County, Texas Agricultural Extension Service

Canadian Botanical Conservation Network - For Kids
Click on the caterpillar to become a botanist in training

Gardening for Kids Theme Page

Aggie Horticulture: Just for Kids
Enter via their home page above or go directly to some of their educational resources below

Gardening Ideas
This section of the site breaks into three pages: Gardening Ideas for Kids, Parents, and Teachers, each with suggested activities. The teacher site also has lesson plans

Kindergarden
An introduction to the ways that children can interact with plants and the outdoors. For example, their "Fun Page for Kids" contains project ideas, an art gallery, and links to other sites. There's also a section on "Special Tips for Gardening with Kids."

Nutrition in the Garden
Information on fun ways to teach children about nutrition through gardening.

School Gardens
General information, resources, and links for starting and operating school gardens.

AskERIC Lesson Plans: Agriculture
About a dozen lesson plans which cumulatively cover grades K-12.

Composting in Schools
Menu selections include: Why Composting? Teacher's Page (lesson plans, activities, teacher forum); Ideas for Student Research Projects; Compost Quiz; Science and Engineering (explaining the science and engineering behind composting; includes experiments); Composting Indoors; Composting Outdoors; Weird and Unusual Composting; and, Frequently Asked Questions.

[The] Evergreen Foundation
"The Evergreen Foundation aims to involve schools, communities, government and business in the process of transforming bleak asphalt, concrete and mown turf into healthier and more educational natural environments." Their School Ground Naturalization program is intended to give Canadian teachers and students the resources to transform school grounds into healthy environments of inspiration, education and play.

Flowerbase
A searchable database of over 7,000 pictures of flowers, plants and garden plants.

Flower Power
Five lesson plans that include the life cycle of a plant, pollination, the anatomy of a flower and more.

From the Ground Up
Here's a teachers' lesson guide on food, agriculture, and sustainable development. There are five on-line lessons: The History of Agriculture and a Description of Sustainable Development; Soil; Agriculture and Chemicals; The Real Cost of Food; and Everything's Connected.

Garden Guides
Tips and techniques on a wide variety of gardening topics, including: herbs and pregnancy; herbal remedies; succession planting; compost; starting seeds; cutting flowers; annuals; forcing bulbs; container garding; herb companions; storing vegetables; and much more. They also have guides on herbs, vegetables, and flowers.

GardenWeb
Here's a great resource for gardeners, including forums, looks at gardens of the world, a directory of the Association of Online Growers and Suppliers, a mystery plant contest, an online magazine (The Cyber-Plantsman), a link to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Garden Exchange (a place to post requests for seeds and plants), gardening tips, and links to other gardening www sites.

[The] Great Plant Escape
Six interdisciplinary plant science lessons for grade 4 and 5 students from the University of Illinois. Activities to help students increase their understanding of how foods grow cover math, science, language arts, social studies, music and art.

How Weeds Impact Agriculture and Modes of Eradication
In this lesson, high school students use the Internet to examine pictures of common weeds and then research and discuss conventional and unconventional methods of eradicating them.

I Can Garden: Kidz Corner
Articles, activities and links for teachers and kids.

Kids and the Classroom
Sponsored by the National Gardening Association, this page is intended for teachers interested in using plants and gardens to enrich learning. Check out their articles, instructional programs, teachers' newsletters, professional development program, and catalog of growing ideas.

Kids in the Garden
Five simple ideas for making gardening at home more fun for kids. The ideas are generalizable to school environments as well.

Kid's Valley Garden
Lots of information, written for kids, on how to plan, plant, maintain, and show their garden. In addition, students can learn about a variety of specific flowers, veggies, herbs, and shrubs. The site is hosted by the Pakenham Junior Horticultural Society, Canada.

Plants and Youth
Five instructional documents from the University of Florida: Discover Indoor Gardening ; Designing and Building a Hanging Basket; Making a Totem; Designing and Building a Terrarium; and, Creating Dish Gardens and Windowsill Water Gardens.

Rot Web
Everything you wanted to know about composting. Check out their "Teacher Resources" for student handouts, activities, and other resources.

[The] Virtual Garden
Included are a searchable database of plants (pictures and instructions for growing), answers to questions about growing house plants, and instructions for garden projects.

Weed Images and Descriptions
A database of information (including images) of common weeds.

[The] Wonderful World of Insects
What would gardening be without insects? There's lots of information at this site although the language level will be too high for younger students.

[ Please email Mrs. Mouse if you find any links on this page that do not work. Thanks! ]