A RootVue Garden

I am SO excited to be finally having some nicer weather! These last three days it has been beautiful around here and we have been outside as much as possible. My husband and inloves cleaned our whole yard and even the raised garden beds now we are just waiting for the "freeze warnings" to stop! 

My husband asked me what I wanted to plant this year and I said all vegetables! We tore up a whole bunch of plants and were going to sell them but in their place he thought I would like to put a new prettier flower. Nope. I want vegetables. Sorry neighbors. Potatoes. Carrots. Peppers. Asparagus. Cauliflower. Broccoli. Zucchini  Beans. Sugar Snap Peas. Spinach. Strawberries. I think that I have about covered it all...oh, yeah and corn!

Since there is still a wait on planting, gardening and an even longer wait on the harvesting, I thought that it would be a fun time to teach the girls a lesson about what we are doing in our garden, how their food grows and get a more hands on "feel" for their harvest later this year.

I ordered the RootVue through Amazon. It came with everything we needed including three packets of root vegetable seeds to plant. The only thing that I didn't like was that the plant "box" was never fully described in detail and when I opened the package I found that it was made of styrofoam  For the price I paid, I thought that it would have been something more. However, if it holds up through the mini harvest then I will be pleased and even willing to write a good product review because other than that I am really excited with what we have so far! 

This was a family project. I wanted to make sure that we were all  able to participate in this project, that way as things started to sprout up and out, we could all get equally excited about the work that we did together!

No, Miss V's face is not all dirty, it's all bruised up! This past Saturday she fell out of a moving wagon, head first, onto the cement! She had a bloody nose and an instant bump with a bruise! Yesterday, while playing with her sisters, she feel on the sidewalk and skinned both of her knees! 

Jasmine planted the radishes.

Justin did the onions and Kiliegh did the carrots but apparently I didn't take pictures of her planting those seeds...hmm, I wonder what I was doing?

Jasmine, Justin and Kiliegh learned a new sign today, while Vada and I continued to work on it..."vegetable".

It's only suppose to take a couple of days to start seeing these sprouts! So maybe by this time next week I may have an update on our RootVue garden!

Earth Day for a Week

I decided to celebrate and educate Earth Day all week. There is plenty to teach on and plenty to learn about when it comes to our planet even when it comes to teaching it to a three year old!

We started today, which is actually a couple of days late on the actual "holiday" itself but due to the flooding in our basement (see here for a little more detail), Bible study and then a doctors appointment we have been very busy this week and our class or study times are also very limited. Our first project was planting some large Lima beans. We used a Large mason jar, some paper towels, about five beans and water. Vada, being the great helper that she is, did most of the work.

See? 

She is showing off her jar of wet beans. We will continue to water them and see what we get. Each day I will remind Vada about how we learned about Earth and how we planted some beans and then I will have her check on them to see if they have changed in any way. Hopefully, we will get some growth and eventually, maybe, we will be able to transfer the bean plant! We shall see.

Next Vada worked with her Pom Pom magnets that her sister made for her and a laminated sheet of the Earth. I was able to print the earth sheet for free, from Itsybitsylearners.com.

Next we did some matching, or two piece puzzles.

I downloaded the below printable's from Royalbaloo.com, again, these were all for free!

For each picture, I tried to talk a little about the drawing. The one below, I said that it was the Earth, where we live and what we are learning about.

The tree was a fun one to "talk" about. We ended up using our signs to talk about how the trees were homes to certain animals and how trees gave us air to breathe (and then we took big deep breaths).

My favorite matching cards that we talked about were the recycling and garbage cans. 

I would say that the garbage stunk and make an acky sound and Vada would copy me.

And then I would say "Pee eww." and grab my nose and Vada would stick her nose out for me to grab as well.

Vada is a hands on learner for sure! She loves, loves, loves crafts and coloring, so we went onto to coloring a Recycling Bin Color book

Doesn't she just look like she is bossing someone around?

We finished our first day of celebrating Earth Day with some tracing, or pre-handwriting practice.

My oldest daughter Jasmine, took these photos of V and I writing. When I looked back through them I was really impressed to see how well Vada was following along visually (or so it seems in the photos). When we were writing together, I could feel Vada's muscles in her hands and was impressed at how she wasn't resisting but really going with my motions and at the same time grasping the marker. She did very well. 

As usual and even she knows this by now, once we are done doing our practice sheets together, Vada get's her very own time to practice on her own!

I always use a different color when her and I write together than when she has her independent writing time. I like to be able to see all of her own markings.