Greening Sam and Avery

our first backyard fire

Happy Friday! Happy June!

Smoke in the eyes is not so fun!

Smores with great friends!

Just a little moment from our outdoor play today!  

MY mother's day

How I wanted to spend today might be a bit different from what other moms did today. But it was an AWESOME day and I did exactly what I wanted to. 

There was water play in our new pool, 

and it was a bit cold but the girls still has a blast!

I tackled a patch of stinging nettles that will hopefully be our pumpkin patch! 

The grass got cut! And I didn't have to do it!

I weeded the strawberry bed and admired the beautiful blooms that have suddenly appeared. 

And we planted a tree! Well, transplanted it really. This small maple tree was in a different part of our yard, being choked out by a larger bush so we decided to try and move it to save it. I don't know if it will make it because we couldn't get a lot of roots, but we will see. 

If this one doesn't make it we have decided we will buy a small tree to put in this spot. We need a bit more shade in our yard and are hoping that we can save this small tree tree and not have to buy one, but we will see. 

We ended the day with a great dinner, reading time and cuddles. 

It was a great outdoor day full of productivity, fun and laughter. What could be better than that?

Hope you all had a great Mother's Day!

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?!

watercolors to capture the flowers

Nana's backyard is filled with flowers. 

As described by a four year old there are yellow spikey ones, 

purple ones with five parts,

orange ones that just look like lots of circles, 

and pink hanging down ones. 

So to try and capture all the beautiful flowers in the backyard we got out our watercolors today. And painted out on the deck. 

These are super simple sets, they actually came with coloring books (like Dora and Tinkerbell) but then we save the paints long after the book as all been used up. 

Even though we walked around looking at the flowers, talking about their shapes and colors, Sam did not really translate that onto the page. She wanted to use blue paint, so suddenly there were blue flowers in Nana's backyard! 

Oh well, we had great conversations about the flowers anyway. And painting is always fun. 

Even I got into it!

I have no artistic skills but Sam just loves to see me paint with her. And I always find it very soothing. 

A great way to spend some quality time while Avery was still napping. 

 

bring on the boots

Between taking Sam to school, doing laundry, packing the car and mulitple other tasks Avery and I stole a few minutes to go find some puddles in our boots! 

Our yard did not have the big puddles that it normally does after a storm (woohoo for rain barrels and new landscaping! shhh don't tell the girls that I am preventing their puddles!) BUT that did not stop Avery from hunting for them. 

And possibly the best part of having rain barrels is being able to indulge your daughter when she says "mommy can you make me a river?".  

With not much watering happening in the garden yet I knew we wouldn't run out of water in the rain barrels before the next rain storm. So why not make a river?!  

I mean really, what could be more fun then having your own little river to walk in? 

Our rain barrel makes play in the mud kitchen, water table, creating rivers, puddles and allowing the girls to water whatever they want whenever they want totally possible and for this going green momma comletely guilt free! I love that. 

Have you stomped in a puddle with your little one lately? Why not make your own puddle just for stomping? Get a rain barrel and you can make one whenever you want. 

Just wanted to check in to see if others were keeping up with the 2012 goal of playing outside everyday. We haven't missed a day yet and I am working really hard to make sure our backyard is ready for LOTS of continuous outdoor play this summer. I can't wait to get all my projects done and be able to share with you lots of ideas for backyard outdoor play to fill your summer days! Let me know how your everyday outdoor play is going. 

best earthworm book

If digging for worms is an everyday occurrence at your house too then you have to find this book. An Earthworm's Life by John Himmelman.

The girls and I have been doing a lot of yard work gardening which almost always leads to finding worms, creating worm homes in our buckets and watching lots of worms wiggle in our hands. My girls LOVE worms. So when I was looking through the nonfiction section at the library and found this book I was pretty excited. I didn't know that much about worms so it was a good book for me too!

We like the book because the text is simple and can hold the girl's attention much like a fiction book but has a ton of great information about worms. We learned all about what they do during the winter, what they eat, who they are scared of and how they have babies. Now the girls have a lot more knowledge about these great little treasures that are all over our backyard! 

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The Nitty Gritty!

If you are looking for even more worm fun you can check out our worm learning activities here and our worm game here.    

a wonderful wednesday

Running along a trail in hot pursuit of great natural treasures!

Lots of native wildflowers!

Time to pause for snacks and photos!

Some playground play.

And then taking a closer look at Lake Mendota.

We wore these little ones out!

Awesome outdoor play can do that!! 

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! 

 

helping the birds get ready for spring

 The girls and I decided that with spring coming so fast in WI the birds would need to be making new nests to hold their eggs and might need some help. And we want to make sure that they have plenty of places for good homes. So we are helping them out by making a few bird houses for them! 

We started out with an orange juice jug and a quaker oats container. 

After they were thoroughly covered in paint and dried we decorated them with stickers!

I put modge-podge over the stickers and paint to "seal" it from the weather. Not sure this is the best kind of seal for this project but it works pretty well. 

 Once they were all dried we pushed a wood cooking squirer through the bird houses and then filled the bottom of the houses with grasses and other soft natural materials for the birds to use. 

Then Sam picked out where she wanted to hang her house!

Avery was not ready to hang her's up yet so it still sits on my kitchen counter. I will wait a few more days to let her decide where she wants to hang it. 

But now we wait to see if the birds will find the house and use it to lay some eggs. 

How are you getting ready for spring? Are you helping the animals in your yard get ready for spring?

 

setting up the mud kitchen

With warm temperatures on the way the girls are getting anxious to play in the water and mud again. So I need to "dust" off the mud kitchen set up and get ir ready to be played with again. 

Here is a before shot. 

Super dark but you are looking at their tool crate all a mess, the two little tables with their main pot on top and their mud "pit" mostly filled in with rocks. I need to clean out the tool crate, rake out the rocks and set up a few new things that I have set aside for them. 

Here are some after shots. 

The tool crate. Still full and kind of messy looking but there are metal pans, plastic cutting board, plastic watering cans, big water jugs (old juice jugs) and a cup filled with stirring utensils. 

Be sure to cut or drill holes in any containers that you intend to use for storage so that water can drain out. 

The two little tables hold her big stirring pot, a few tree cookies that act as plates and a container underneath with a tight fitting lid that she keeps "treasures" in that can be used later in mud creations. The black plastic tray is just another mixing/serving container. 

But the big change is the hooks and new pans that we added. 

This is a great way to make sure they dry well and don't rust as quickly. It is also really easy for Sam to hang them up, making clean up a breeze. I am hoping to get one more little table to put underneath these pots as another working space. 

The girls played in their new space for quite a while today and loved it! I don't think the 50+ degree weather that we had today will stick around, I am sure we will get at least one more cold spell, but the mud kitchen is ready for whenever spring officially arrives! 

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The Nitty Gritty!

So we made that goal at the beginning of the year to get outside everyday for some play time and so far we are succeeding. What is great is that now we are heading into the easy seasons! I am super excited for long hours in the backyard and whole days where we barely go inside at all. What a clean house I will have!!!  Are you getting in some outdoor play everyday?