We just finished reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The kids loved the book and expanded their vocabularies and imaginations while listening to the story.
We did a lot of corresponding activities for the book. Listed below are some ideas and resources for you to accompany The Secret Garden.
Field Trips:
Visit a local greenhouse, nursery or botanical conservatory and discuss which plants and flowers there are the same as the ones mentioned in the book.
We visited the Muttart Conservatory in Edmonton, Alberta and a local greenhouse.
Explore the outdoors and document the trees, flowers and weeds found in a nature notebook.
Free printables:
Books to accompany this unit:
The Magic Schoolbus Plants Seeds
Other Ideas:
Have the kids locate India and England on a globe or map and trace the route Mary may have taken to get to England from India by boat.
Let your kids do some colouring pages. Here is a link to some Secret Garden themed colouring pages we found to print. Snuggle Puppy did a great job of colouring his!
Before the secret garden was described in the book, I had the kids draw what they thought it would look like and then as I read the chapter describing what Mary found when entering the secret garden, I had the kids sketch as I read and colour their pictures later.
Sensory Bin – There are many great ideas for garden themed sensory bins out there. I chose to make a Garden Sensory Pail to go along with this book.
Garden Themed Meal – You could make a meal together using only things grown in your garden or just make a fun snack or lunch with a garden theme. I chose to make a Garden Themed Muffin Tin Lunch.
Gardening – Of course creating your own garden is the best hands-on activity of all! We planted sunflowers, pepper plants and seeds for many vegetables.
End the unit by watching The Secret Garden movie together and afterwards discussing what ways the book and movie differed and which the kids preferred.
We love, love, love book-based units around here. You’ve shared a good variety of activities to go along with The Secret Garden! Thanks!
I love your ideas. We will be reading Secret Garden this coming summer. You fit in some many great things into your busy life. I love that.
Blessings, Dawn
The Secret Garden was one of my favorite books as a child. How fun that you extend that book with so many great activities in your area! I love your garden lunch!!!
Thank you…it’s been one of my personal favourite book studies that we’ve done so far.
Hi! Thanks for taking the time to share your activities for The Secret Garden. My four boys and I just loved reading that book last spring. We listened to the CD’s during lunch or on the road to co-op while some of us followed along with the beautiful unabridged picture book illustrated by Inga Moore. The boys planted various things in a little garden behind our house. This book was perfect timing for us because we then got to go see the kids’ sitter perform in a lead role for The Secret Garden musical at our local high school! We also enjoyed watching the movie. So many precious memories to tuck away!
I love your extension activities for this book. I think it would make a fun family read aloud this summer. Thanks for sharing at the After School Link Party, I’ve featured you today.
Thanks so much for featuring this Kelly!
My grandaughter and I read this book together and enjoyed it so so much. She thought up so many extention activities to do after she finished the book, but she decided in the end that the most important feeling she got was about change. I quote her “everything changes “in this book. After lots of pondering about what to do for a summer project, she finally decided to do it about personality changes in people and why they happened. A card game is one of her ideas matching
The character definition with the right character in the form of a memory game
I read this book with my grandmother. We read it outloud. We had a lot of fun speaking “Yorkshire” So many ideas came to mind to do but I finally decided to talk about “change”. Everything changes during this story and they are all good changes. I am going to make a matching/memory game.
That’s a great idea!