7 Seed Catalog Activities for Kids

Looking at seed catalogs is one of my favorite things to do in the cold months of winter. Dreaming about what we’ll grow in our garden and exploring new varieties and colors of old favorites is so exciting! The girls also like looking at the vibrant colors and identifying plants they recognize.

I can’t bear to recycle seed catalogs without getting as much use out of the beautiful pages. We use them in so many ways that we’re excited to share! Below are seed catalog ideas and free PDF activities we’ve created for you to try with your family! You can have access to all 5 PDFs as one document at this link.

While you can order seeds online, there is something special about print catalogs. If you don’t already get seed catalogs, that’s okay! Do you know that joyful seed catalogs can arrive to your home in the mail?! These are some companies with nice free catalogs – you can request a catalog at their website.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

Burpee

Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Co.

Territorial Seed Company

Logees

Winter Garden Collage

Cut out pictures and glue or tape them onto a large paper to make a colorful garden.

Colorful Letters and Numbers

Write a large letter or numeral on a piece of paper. Cut out and glue pictures on top of the symbol.

Magnets

Glue a picture behind a clear, glass cabochon gem. Then glue a magnet on the backside. We used a tutorial at this link. As a note – this activity has small parts.

Scavenger Hunt

Find a picture to match the description and glue it in the box. There is a pre-made PDF and a blank template at the link below.

Grow a Rainbow

Using the book “Planting a Rainbow” by Lois Ehlert as inspiration, cut out different colored pictures to glue around the arches of a rainbow. A PDF at this link has a rainbow to use, although a larger sheet of paper may work better.

Number Garden

Cut out a flower to glue on each square to make a number garden showing 1, 2, and 3.

We also use seed catalogs to help us plan our gardens. We created cut out pictures to answer the question “What do you want to grow in your garden this year?” One of our daughters also wrote plants in addition to cutting out pictures. To help the girls imagine themselves in the garden, we also made collages and included a picture of them in the center of the “Dream Garden”.

As we plan out our gardens, we make a map to show where we’ll plant everything. Instead of color coding with markers or crayons, we cut out long rectangles from the catalogs to glue on to the map. We used a glue stick to go over the draft lines and then our three-year old placed the strips of pictures on top of our glue line.