Preschool Corner *Friday's Nature Table *Garden Challenge *Kids Get Crafty * Read, Explore, Learn

These are the books that have been on our theme shelves the past couple of weeks. We have enjoyed them all!

And this is what it looked like around here a couple of weeks ago.

Here are three more books that have been fun to look at and have served as resources and inspiration for many of our gardening projects.

Our Spring/Gardening Sensory Tub

Black beans for soil, green paper shreds for grass, a wind-up butterfly and kaleidoscope from Hobby Lobby, a mini-pail, shovel & rake, compostable peat pots (won't break!), packets of seed (that are to remain sealed - I left the seeds so they will make a sound when the kids shake them), and washed plant markers from some of our purchased plants. They also have their little Tinkerbell watering can nearby to use (pretend) with the tub. I still want to print off pictures of seedlings and flowers to put on craft sticks, so the kids can pretend their plants are growing.

Some of our Kid Activity Projects

I got the kids little pots.

They added faces with acrylic paint.

Left to right: Tornado, Sissy, and Dash. (I drew a face on Sissy's for her to paint.) They added soil. Tornado planted chives (which looks like grass) in his pot, and the other two planted grass. They're going to see whose pot gets some growing action first. They also added soil and grass seeds to this baking pan. We wanted to make a jungle for our animals like Mama Jenn did. They also got their Crayola brand My First Garden: pumpkin pack started. One of our main goals with gardening this year was to grow pumpkins and gourds since we always seem to spend too much money on them for decorating in the fall. The kids just had to water the little soil pellets and wait for them to plump up. Then they buried the seeds within each pellet and cover with the lid provided until we start to see seedlings sprout up.

Other Gardening

I got very energized and motivated this year to create a butterfly garden and a vegetable garden. Papaw instructed us to use our garden hose to mark off our area, then we dug it up and filled with with soil and growing material. Sissy was very determined that she was wearing the perfect outfit for gardening; after all, it did have flowers on it.

This is Dash's very own garden spot.

He planted flower seeds and lined rocks around it.

All three of the kids have been very hands-on with all of our gardening work. (Sometimes they pour too many seeds in one spot, though.) I will admit that part of my failure as a gardener in the past has been my laziness to go outside and water. But now I have 3 kids who love to play in the water water plants, so that's great! Sissy especially loved adding little shiny stones to the indoor plants.

I'm very excited about all of my houseplants!

I had a bunch of old craft sticks the kids once decorated. We used those to label all of the indoor and outdoor plants. There are a couple of vegetables outside labeled "mystery vegetable" because somehow we got them mixed up. Adds to the excitement, I guess!

During a break in planting, the kids used all of the empty pot containers to set up an "icecream store." We all had to buy something from Sissy.

In our garden: we mostly chose flowers that are especially suited for a butterfly garden.

We have flowers, vegetables, and herbs all mixed everywhere within the borders of the garden and outside. We'll see how it goes.

Papaw generously donated two park benches he wasn't using. For the outline, we re-used stones that were on less obvious parts of our property.

And here are the pots on one side of our front steps. I was especially excited about my new little gnome (and 3 little owls not shown). I've always wanted gnomes in my garden. The kids did, too, after seeing Gnomeo and Juliet.

I printed off the Garden Pack, which is really cute, from Homeschool Creations. We were technically too late to enter the first link-up for the Gardening Challenge at Homeschool Village, but we took on the "challenge," regardless.

Link-ups:

Read, Explore, Learn at JDaniel4's Mom

Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations

Kids Get Crafty at Red Ted Art

HSV Garden Challenge at The Homeschool Village

Friday's Nature Table at The Magic Onion