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:
Last time, I wrote about how the kids painted pots and planted grass (or chives - their choice) seeds. Sissy's turned out really cute. (They boys' suffered at the hands of all the recent bad storms. They got dumped over, and we are replanting.)
The pan we filled with dirt and grass seeds also proved to be a worthwhile project.
I think the kids play with it every day (especially my 6 year old son). The grass grew really thick, and it's holding up pretty well to all of their cars and animals clomping through it.
One really fun surprise were these two pots which burst forth with flowers unexpectedly. They still had the dirt in them from last summer. I didn't realize they had contained perennials, so this was such a little gift.
Our veggies are growing - even our "mystery vegetable" which somehow went unlabeled. Here are a few of them.
All of the rain has been a blessing, and there is obvious growth in our garden. However, in other areas it has been a detriment. Many of the seeds we planted directly into the ground are sprouting up, but some areas really washed out. A lesson in gardening and farming.
Speaking of plants, my parents gifted me with two beautiful plants on Easter. My dad planted these Hen and Chicks in this cool pot. I love it.
