Take one – make five!
This blog offers ideas to help you make the most of resources that you have, or can easily acquire, to create a range of related activities for your students. Making several uses of the same resource, or sensory input, allows for cyclic learning, generalisation, and consistency across a topic or period of time.
This blog post is all about… Mint!
MInt is a perfect herb to grow with your class. It grows quickly and comes in a good range of variations, all of which are easy to source. A basic plant can be purchased from any supermarket and will work well for most of the ideas here.
- Growth. We often have topics such as ‘Living Things’, ‘Growth’ or ‘The Natural World’. Mint is so easy to grow and because starter plants are so easy to obtain, it works really well for this topic. Experiments such as variation in light, water, and food will quickly offer results for your class to observe. Propagation is easy (this is an invasive species) so stems can be torn off and rooted easily by planting in soil or water. There are several varieties of mint with distinct appearances so visual comparisons can be made and recorded.
- Smell, taste, and touch. As there are so many distinct variations of Mint, for example, the wonderful Chocolate Mint, it is excellent for sensory work observing the similarities and differences between varieties. Try looking, touching, smelling, and tasting (always according to medical guidelines).
- Sensory playdough! Make your own playdough and add chopped mint. The mint can be finely chopped to add a smooth texture or roughly added, with stalks and stems so the playdough has an unusual texture. Colour can also be added.
- Dry some mint in the summer sunshine (or the oven!). Compare the dried leaves with the fresh leaves. Crumble the dried leaves and add to paint to make scented pictures!
- Mint Tea! Gorgeous and refreshing and just perfect for a summer’s day as it can be drunk hot or as an iced drink. Simple to make so can be done so easily…and could be a fun pretend play activity. (Check recipes for Mint Lemonade if having a celebration!)
Carol Allen
