April Garden Update

Would you like to continue some "virtual gardening" with me?  Here is the current state of things April 20th.  We had a big storm last night and I was worried about the hail destroying the onions, but they are still going strong:

My indoor seedlings are hanging in there. I'm very curious to see how they transplant, but we still have a few weeks to wait. The tomatoes (in three large cups) are doing great and you can see that my cilantro has sprouted (bottom nine pots).  The tall plant with the straws supporting it is a sunflower seed that C planted in church. It had a second set of leaves at the top, which I accidentally broke off... I'm still hoping it will make it!

2010 Digitized

I've been doing a bit more digital scrapbooking lately, with the goal in mind of creating at least one layout for each month of 2010.  I hope to eventually print these out and make an album!

July

September

 October

November

December

Preschool - Week 21 - Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon is a classic children's storybook. Should I be embarrassed to say that this is the first time E  as heard it? We did enjoy this book a lot. The illustrations are colorful, as there are a lot of fun details in the pictures if you take the time to notice them.


We added a new sight word to our box, "moon."  She also did a math worksheet from our book.

We also did a lapbook this week, from homeschoolshare.com, of course. :)

To start off with, I found an online coloring page for Goodnight Moon, which E "colored" and I printed for our lapbook cover:

Of course we had to talk about the moon and it's different phases. She already knew about the crescent moon and full moon, but we also learned about a half moon and gibbous moon. This link has a neat little animation showing the moon and how the shadow makes the different phases.

E made a moon phase spinner for her lapbook. She had to be very careful to cut out all those small circles!

Next we colored in a little book of colored balloons. So far she's only learned "red", "blue" and "green" for sight words, but she sounded out and correctly figured out what each mitten should be colored all on her own:

 To play off the "mittens" theme, we traced her right and left hands in a little flap book to help her remember which is which.  She had to add some pink nail polish for fun:

We made a "clock" spinner this week. Not so much to tell time, but for number recognition. I'd ask, "Where is the eleven?" and she would point the arrow at it.

One of the elements of the lapbook is a ton of little cards. (I helped her cut these out - way too many!) I glued an envelope into the lapbook to contain them. The cards have different images representing things in the book and can be used in a variety of ways.  When I read the book, each thing that was pointed out in the room E had to find and put in a separate pile. Then, as the little bunny said "goodnight" to each thing, we put that card back in the envelope.  Also, we used the cards for "look and find" and flipped the pages to find each item on the cards, putting them in the envelope until they were all found.

Our completed lapbook:

First Plantings

On April 6th we planted our onions:

9 per square x 3 squares:

Our indoor seedlings are coming along. The lettuce is looking a little sickly, but my tomatoes are going strong:

So strong, in fact, that I decided to transplant them into larger containers (cups with holes poked in the bottom for drainage). I got some basil and cilantro seeds from my friend Julie and started those on the 10th.

Garden Complete

On Sunday Doug and I completed the final details of the garden. This included fencing it in to keep out the four-legged creatures (and small two-legged ones as well...) and staking out my "squares" that I will use to keep track of what is planted where.

We also took some of the extra pavers from the old garden and set them up around the new garden as a simple path.

Finally, we tried our best to level out half of the old garden and planted some grass seed in it's place.  We have a heap of topsoil/mulch in the other half of the old garden, which we plan to use next year when (if?) we create a second raised bed.  One year at a time!

A Raised Bed

Doug and I were busy today. After dropping the girls off with Grandma and Grandpa for a spring break visit, we got to work creating a new raised bed garden in the back yard.

Our existing garden is pretty much in full shade, and has not done well with our vegetables in years past.  After much research, we decided to start small, with a 4' x 8' raised bed, and plan to use the square foot gardening technique for planting.

To keep things frugal, we raided the existing bed for pavers and top soil.

To keep things easy, we covered the grass with newspaper and cardboard and are hoping that works out alright... We'll find out!

We also made a trip to our friendly, local alpaca farm to get a large load of alpaca poop to supplement our soil mix.

Tomorrow we plan to set up a fence to keep out the kids, dog and (hopefully) rabbits!

Preschool - Week 20 - We're Going on a Bear Hunt

This week we rowed "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen.  This story has a motions that go with it and we had fun beating the rhythm on on laps and acting out the bear hunt all week.  After several weeks of slacking low-key preschool, we made another lapbook, which made E very excited.

E colored in the title page for our lapbook, making sure to copy the book cover as closely as possible:

 Our lapbook activities came from homeschoolshare.com - where else?  E drew a family portrait, which includes all of our family celebrating "mommy's purple party":

Another fun element asked the question "What would you like to hunt for?"  E decided she wanted to go on an ostrich hunt:

We printed out the sequence cards for E to cut out and then put in the order that they appeared in the story:

Following the story we made these sight word cards which self-store in the little cave:

We continued our math workbook, doing a page each day. The novelty has worn off for her, but it is still so good for her to do.  She writes some of the numbers herself and some I draw dotted lines for her to trace:

Our finished lapbook (with a lift-the-flap book of bears and their habitats):

We also watched a YouTube video of Michael Rosen doing a reading of his book: