Greening Sam and Avery

flower planting day

Our veggie garden has been a bit of a bust so far this year. I tried to use some of last year's seeds for onions and carrots which so far has not produced any sprouts. But we have also planted beans, more onions and lettuce and are hoping that those will sprout in the next day or two. 

To make us feel better today we filled all of our pots with beautiful flowers! The girls got to pick out (some) of the flowers without any guidance or coaching from us so we got some that I wasn't expecting but it has lead to very interesting and fun pots around the house. 

The girls got to help with all the planting and filling of pots. We were very excited this year to fill our pots with soil from our own compost bin! No store bought potting soil for us this year. We did occassionally get a few egg shells in our pots which the girls thought was hilarious. 

After all the plants were potted then came their favorite part...the watering!

Happy flower planting! 

gardening report (gardening with kids)

We are in the middle of yard sale/garage sale madness at this house! Five families have dropped off stuff at my house to be sold Thursday through Saturday. The kids (mine plus three other friends) will have a lemonade and cookie stand too! 

But in the midst of pricing, organizing, and setting up to sell all of our junk, I mean slightly used wonderful stuff, we had to do some planting.

First off I just wanted to ask if any gardeners have ever seen Rhubarb that looks this THIS!

Should I harvest it? Is it suppose to flower like that? What do I do with those really long stalks? Any advice you have on harvesting rhubarb would be AWESOME! Please leave a comment. 

Today we planted yellow onions, romaine lettuce, yellow beans and bush beans. The girls had a great time taking turns to plant with their dad. 

 Our method for having the girls help is to hand them a few seeds and then we point to where the seed should go and they put it in. Once all the seeds are planted we work together to push the soil back over the seeds. I imagine this is a pretty common way of having little kids plant row crops.

Sam, at age 4, is already pretty good at handling the smaller seeds (carrots, onions, etc.) but Avery is just on her first planting year to be involved so she just helped with the bigger bean seeds.

Beans are, in my opinion, some of the best plants to grow with young kids. The seeds are big and easy to handle. The seeds sprout fairly quickly so that they don't have to be patient for too long. The beans are easy to pick off and a great immediate snack in the yard. My girls both loved helping to pick the beans last year and I know this year they will get just as into the process.

To see a list of other great plants to grow with your little ones head over here. And be sure to check out the book "Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots"  by Sharon Lovejoy. It is an awesome resource for gardening with kids. 

How is your gardening going so far this year?  And WHAT do I do with my rhubarb?!

outdoor play link up - garden work, i mean play!

Our outdoor time this week has been all about getting the gardens ready! I am a HUGE believer in having my kids help me out in the garden and getting them involved in all stages of keeping our gardens healthy and looking nice.

So this week we re-worked some of our erosion prevention trench. 

Which invovled lots of digging, moving rock and placing rocks! Great fun for a four year old and two year old.

Then we created our brand new strawberry patch!

We had to rake bake the landscaping mulch, pull up the weed prevention sheet and then level out the area. We put in some new stones to create a little walkway and then placed the landscape logs to make it look nice! We still have to add stakes and a rabbit fence but that will happen after we get the plants in the ground next week.

We also had to do a little work in our veggie garden.

We had to work the soil a bit, add some of our homemade compost to the soil and then we actually planted two different kinds of onions already! Again the fence still needs to be added to this garden as well (rabbits and the neighbors dogs would eat all of our produce if we didn't put up fences!) but that can wait till the plants are up a bit more.

Sorry there are no in progress pictures of the girls helping me work but we were pretty muddy this week and that is not conducive to having the camera out there with us!

It is awesome how the chores that I see as work instantly becomes play when my kids are involved! Yes, they make the projects a bit more messy but WAY more fun!

This Week's Feature!

Love this idea from Train Up a Child and I can't wait to try it out this summer. Building with Ice Cubes

And you have to go over to the original post and check out what tool her kiddos used to experiment with ice melting!!  This mom kind of rocks my world! 

On to the Party!

A few guidelines for the party...

- Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!

- If you'd like us to further share your post (e.g., on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest), please just include a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play!

- Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.

- Each time we will feature an activity from the previous party. 

- By contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished. 

Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1

 

a child's curiosity

When you do not pay attention to the curiosity of a child everyone loses. 

 

Yesterday Sam attempted to interrupt my weeding time with a question about something she had found. I glanced up, 

and then looking back down at my weeds said "oh Sam they are just mushrooms, don't touch them, we don't know what kind they are".  She came right back to me that they were soft and didn't seem like mushrooms she had seen before. Again I dismissed her, told her again not to touch them and went back to my weeding (because of course dandelions are the most important thing in the world!). 

And she ran off. Off to explore something else, dig up something else or water another flower. 

Then, today when it was just Avery and I out in the garden I found those two soft, mushroom-like things that Sam had found. And my heart sank. What a teachable moment I missed with Sam yesterday. 

We could have talked about this sign of spring. About this tiny little amazing white puff that would soon grow to be a huge green plant.

About the big green lead that was all curled up inside there just waiting to grow and uncurl. 

But I missed out. In that moment my weeding was more important and we all missed out. So, later today when the rain stops we will go explore, find those "mushrooms" again and talk about what they really are!

Moms - put down the dishes, the laundry, the weeding tools and the cleaning supplies. It can all wait. Play with your kids. Get them outside exploring, learning and playing. Be there with them, asking questions, feeling things and discovering new wonders in your own backyard. Keep in mind what is truly the most important thing in the world right now and don't miss out! 

 

the start to our garden

We planted five tomato plants today. We only want one or two but we are starting with some seeds that were left over from last year so I am not sure that any of them will sprout. 

Here are the litle seed planting pods before we "planted" the seeds and watered them. 

You simply drop the seed in the hole in the middle and then water them. After a few minutes they swelled up and were ready to sit in front of a bright window! 

The girls will check them daily I am sure to see if the seeds have sprouted. 

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty!
We are probably starting these a bit early but I kind of failed last year at starting the tomato plants indoors. Not many of them were strong enough to withstand the wind once they got outside. So I am trying to give us plenty of cushion time to sprout more if we need to and to get these little plants nice and big before they go outside.

Do you start seeds indoors? Would love to hear about your process! 

let the gardening begin

We are preparing for gardening season! WOOHOO!! That makes me happy just to say that. 

I cannot wait to be digging in the soil, planting seeds and then many months from now helping Sam fill her bucket full of produce and yummy fresh stuff for us to eat. I just love being in the garden with my girls. 

But for now we do some indoor activities to get us ready. 

First we are reading a book we just found at the library. Super silly, but who knew there were so many vegetables!

I put some serious enthusiasm in my voice when I read this book, like I am doing a cheer at a football game, and the girls think it is hilarious. Plus, we have been able to look at all the pictures of things we could grow and talk about what we have room for and which ones we really want to try to grow this year. If you are feeling the need to discover some new veggies in your meals using this book to introduce them to your kids might be a good idea. 

Then Sam got busy making her own garden! Gotta love the Jung Seed catalog (any plant or seed catalog would work). I let her pick out which plants she wanted to put in her garden and where she wanted to put them. Great cutting and glueing work for her. 

And the final product! 

She really loves carrots. 

Are you starting to think about gardening yet? How do you get your kids involved?

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty!

This is the second year we have done this project. Last year she picked the food she wanted based only on color and this year she was much more focused on what foods she actually likes to eat. I love seeing the change and growth in her.

This is a project that can easy grow and change with the age of your child. With much older kids you can have them actually look at seed packets to determine how much growing space certain things need. Then they can do the math problems to really figure out the best way to use your garden area to grow the most food. And letting kids have a say in the food you grow is always an awesome idea! Or if you have the space give them a section that they can plan out entirely and then take care of throughout the whole season!

Happy gardening! 

 

protecting spring

I think I was just saying the other day that winter was hanging on BUT at the same time spring seems to be trying to come!

Avery and I found this the other day.

It seems that the warm spot right up against our house is ready for spring! And it is WAY to early for that. I know there will be more freezes and more snow. To make sure that these flowers still look beautiful when spring is actually suppose to come I decided to cover up the flower a bit.

We dug some soil out of our composter, raked back the mulch around the flowers and added the compost around the little leaves.

Avery and I tackled this project while Sam was at school. Avery loved digging in the dirt and helping me to find all the little sprouting leaves. I don't think she understood exactly what we were doing but she had fun anyway!

 

is it green where you are

Then these books might be of interest to you!

I was in the plants and seeds non-fiction section of the library the other day and found these three books that intrigued me. If you are in your growing season still or heading into it these might be good ones to check out for your little ones or your classroom.

Seeds Travel, Elaine Pascoe 

Real photographs show kids all about how seeds grow, what they need to grow and how they might travel to get the things that they need. The pictures of the animals are great. There is not too much information for little ones but enough that it is a great learning book!

Seed to Sunflower, Camilla de la Bedoyere

Reading this book cover to cover may be a bit much for most preschoolers but the detailed pictures and photographs can be used to help show young children different phases and processes that plants go through. A parent or teacher could break the book up and use different pages along with other activities to further the learning. 

A Seed Is Sleepy, Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long

A non-fiction seed book that is poetic! Can you believe it? This one has lots of different reading levels to involve many readers and learners. For little ones you can read the biggest text and then expand on that simply in your own words by just talking about what is in the picture. For older kids reading the whole text will teach them a ton about plants and seeds. This book shows pictures of seeds from all over the world and in all kinds of climates.

 

Read any good seed or plant books lately from the non-fiction section?

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty!

I could see these books being paired with -

• making art out of seeds
• an outdoor seed hunt
• planting seeds
• hartvesting seeds
• dissecting fruits/vegetables to find seeds
• and much more!

What seed activities do you have posts about? Leave a comment I would love to read them!

next year's pumpkins have been planted

We cleaned out a huge section of our back-back yard today. Then we dug six holes and buried all the seeds, guts and chunks of pumpkin waste that we had from our pumpkin carving party. The chunks and guts aren't really important, just a good way to compost those as well. I am hoping that if I can keep the weeds tamed back there that we could have a really good pumpkin patch.

The girls were very curious about what was going on and grabbed little rakes and shovels to help us dig the holes, plant the seeds and clear out some brush.

Today, unlike most days, I did not tell them they had to help. I didn't encourage them to come over and join me. I let them play and do their own thing while I got started. They gradually became interested in what I was doing and both found their way over to me wanting to help out. I love that!

We have a lot more yard work days coming up with dead-heading plants, raking leaves and cleaning up to get ready for winter. Though the girl's "help" may sometime slow us down it is so much more fun when these days can be spent as a family.

Do you include your kids in yard work?

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty!

Not much else to add about yard work. I enjoy it most days but the work to clear out our pumpkin patch was killer on my back and my bed is calling my name!

I do want to let you all know that I am going to be out for a few days this week. I am headed to the WI Association for Environmental Education Fall Conference! I am SO excited for this conference, especially a workshop on early childhood environmental education. Can't wait to share with you all the new stuff that I learn.

I will still get the outdoor play link up on Friday (super excited about my idea to share!) but probably not much else, until I get back on Sunday.

Hoping to at least get a book post up before I head out of town though!

just because they are green does not mean they aren't tasty

That was a long title!

The temps will be dropping here very soon and I wanted to do something with all the green tomatoes that I still had on the plants. Thanks to my sister-in-law I knew just what to do with all these green tomatoes!

This was the small pile!

So, I followed a great recipe and turned them into some really good green tomato salsa!

We made 11 jars of salsa and have already given two of them away to friends as thank you gifts!

Sam was very confused at first as to why we were picking the tomatoes that are green, when I have been telling her all summer to only pick the red ones! But once we started picking she loved finding the green ones. They are harder for her to spot than the red ones so she really loved the "hunt"!

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty!

I am exhausted and have had a long day otherwise I would share the recipe that we used. If you are really interested leave me a comment and I will send you the recipe sometime soon!

Good night!