Getting Dirty in the Garden

Materials:
plants or seeds
dirt and/or potting soil
spade
water

So, baby elephant ears.  

My kids love gardening, especially my daughter.  If she's allowed to dig holes, get her hands dirty, shower the new plants with water...she's a happy girl.  Daniel likes it, too, but his attention span is a lot shorter.

I don't think my kids are very unique in that way.  I think most kids delight in getting outside and getting dirty.  And if they can be a part of watching a new thing grow, all the better.  

There are also so many teachable moments when it comes to gardening.  Everything from root systems, to photosynthesis, to the insects and worms in the dirt can become a new lesson.

Exhibit A:

Earthworms are such friendly little guys.  Quietly, blindly, going about their business in the dirt.  

"Why are they slimy?"

"Why are they blind?"  

"What do they eat?"  

"Is it okay for them to get on the elephant ears?"

There are all kinds of lessons here...even an extended lesson on how to treat little animals (it doesn't include flinging them across the dirt, in case you were interested).

And then there's the satisfaction over accomplishing a goal.  Our front yard looked like this yesterday afternoon:

What a mess.  But things have to get worse before they get better, right?  If you look at the end of the garden bed over on the left side, you'll see a large clump of elephant ears.  Our plan was to spread them out to fill out the whole bed.  So we spent some time digging up the babies.  I dug them up and Natalie and Daniel spread them out.

And Silas helped.  Sort of.  Really, he just crawled around in the dirt.  

And ended up like this:

Sigh.  He's definitely been my dirtiest baby.

Then we dug new holes and planted them!  Natalie loved this part!  

We still need edgers and mulch, but this is looking so much better already.  And my hope is that by this time next year, we'll have some beautiful elephant ears to hide the old, stained concrete porch.  

All right now, get outside!  Go plant something -- and get your kids involved!  Tell them to observe as many bugs as they can find!  Start digging holes and those bugs come flooding to the surface.  And then go look up what earthworms eat...we still need to figure that one out ;)

I love Spring!

My yard is full.

Strawberry Plants and Herb Garden

Wandering.

Growing.

Tomato Plants 

And in bloom.

Bougainvillea

I love Spring!  And so do the kiddos...we're off to plant some baby elephant ears beside the front porch.  Stay tuned!

Experimenting with Surface Tension

Materials:
one cup filled to the brim with water
one cup filled with pennies
(optional) abacus
(optional) hypothesis and observation sheet with pencil

Water tension is defined by Merriam-Webster as the property of a liquid surface that causes it to act like a stretched elastic membrane. Its strength depends on the forces of attraction among the particles of the liquid itself and with the particles of the gas, solid, or liquid with which it comes in contact. Surface tension allows certain insects to stand on the surface of water and can support a razor blade placed horizontally on the liquid's surface, even though the blade may be denser than the liquid and unable to float. Surface tension results in spherical drops of liquid, as the liquid tends to minimize its surface area.

Um...that's a little wordy for my 3 and 4 year old scientists!  I decided not to go into any kind of formal definition and instead point out various examples of this phenomenon and give them a name for it.  

Surface Tension

We walked around our yard and noticed drops of rain on the slide and leaves from the night before.  

"Why doesn't the rain just slide off?"

"I don't know.... Look, there's some more!"

"What is it doing instead?"

"It's making bubbles."  

The kids had a good time finding all the examples of surface tension that we could.

Then it was experiment time.  Before going any further, let me say that this experiment is definitely more appropriate for the 2nd-5th grader.  If you're trying this with younger kids, I would keep things pretty simple.  And expect that at least half the point will be good practice in following directions!  My kids were aching to throw a bunch of pennies in at once...and I do mean throw.  

Okay, back to the nuts and bolts.  Set up the experiment.  Have your pennies handy (we put ours in a cup) and fill a second cup to the absolute top with water.  We also used an abacus to help keep track of our counting.  If your kids are older, you may find this unnecessary.  

Ask your kids, "How many pennies do you think we can drop into this cup of water before the water overflows?"  Write down everyone's answers on your hypothesis sheet (we just verbalized our hypothesis since my kiddos are so young...which, by the way, they loved.  Thank you, Dinosaur Train).

Start dropping pennies!

Careful!  Notice the water everywhere.  That was due to throwing a bunch in at once and starting over.  Patience. 

With preschoolers, it's important that everyone gets a turn ;)

As soon as you start to see the water overflowing, stop.  Write down your observations.  You'll be amazed at how many pennies can go in the cup before the surface tension breaks!

This would be a good point to explain to older kids why so many pennies were able to fit (the definition behind surface tension). It's also a great time to try to think of other examples...water bugs walking across the water, small objects floating on top of the water even though they sink when placed under the water, etc. 

Overall, a super easy and fun experiment!  

Thanks for reading!

Publishing Little Books

Materials:

8 1/2 x 11 copy paper (or any paper of your choice)

scissors

hole punch

brads

pen, pencil, markers, crayons, etc.

Okay, so this is a super simple activity.  Basic.  But it is definitely one of those things that my kids never get tired of doing, and it takes little to no preparation.

Publishing little books.  These stories are dictated to me and I write them down.  My daughter (who is 4) can come up with the stories almost on her own.  My son (who is 3) needs some guidance.  I help by asking questions and getting him to think about what might come next, but he does the writing.

These books can be as simple or elaborate as you'd like.  Anything from folding and stapling to sewing a binding and adding a hard cover would work.  One of my favorite methods is to cut computer paper in half lengthwise, and then fold in half again to create a little book.  I personally like the feel of a smaller book, but there's really no wrong way to make these.  I put a few pieces together, hole punch, and add brads to bind the book together.

Luv E Lamb Found Her Friends

By: Natalie Lashbrook

I like to add a copyright and date to each book we make.  I would get the kids to add a dedication page, but they don't understand.  When I ask Natalie if she'd like to write her book for anyone, she promptly responds with, "No.  I want to write it for me."  Okay, fair enough :)

The following is Natalie's story.  She dictated and I simply wrote down what she said, word for word.

Notice the exclamation point.  Be sure to yell that, per Natalie's instructions.  Apparently, I wasn't reading with enough enthusiasm.

Since Natalie goes to Awana every Wednesday evening, she's familiar with the Cubbie friends and Luv E Lamb.  It's okay for young, pre-writing kids to write about familiar characters.  In fact, it's a great starting point.  Writers write about what they know. 

Aaaand, who doesn't love a little reader's theatre?

Natalie:

Daniel, reading "Spiderman and the Spectacular Machine":

Now go make some little books -- and have fun!

Everyday Learning

Yesterday was a busy day.  We impulsively (not so impulsively?  Is it impulsive if you've been planning on it for the last five years?) started ripping our bed of ferns out of the ground.  Dave's not a fan of them and I'm indifferent.  But having the ground cleared of all those pesky ferns will leave a giant spot in which we can replant our Philodendron.  Oh, Philodendron, what a trooper you are.  Surviving happily in a pot even though I know you'd love to grow into a tree...in the ground.  Patience.

Dave also did some major tree trimming.  He cut a trunk into several pieces, giving us an inside view of the rings.  We brought one piece over to the front porch for the kids to explore.

Natalie counted the rings.  We discussed possible reasons why the tree appeared to have grown more on one side and less on the other side.  I also helped the kids to notice that some of the rings were fatter than the others.  Why?  With a little guidance, they came to the conclusion that the amount of sun and rain the tree gets will affect how well it grows.  I pointed out that this tree was in a spot that received a whole lot of shade on one side and a whole lot of sun on the other.  

While ripping out all those awful ferns, I found this:

 Butterfly cocoon, maybe?  I need to do a little research.  But it was cool enough that I didn't want to just toss it to the side.  I would love for the kids to be able to watch this little guy emerge (if it is, indeed, a butterfly).

We ended the day with our first sprinkler fun of the season.  Long live summer!

(Notice the ginormous pile of ferns in the background.  Yeah, we're not done yet.)

Always a superhero...

New things to explore!

She was dancing in the water.  It makes my heart glad to see them so happy.

Rinsing off. 

I think this little guy approves!

Thanks for reading!   

Identifying Seashells

Materials:
Seashells - We found ours at the beach, but these can be purchased at craft stores.
Shell Identification Cards - We found our cards here at Homeschool Share, listed as Shell Memory Game Cards.

We've been working on an undersea unit.  I use the term "working" very loosely.  Basically, we asked a bunch of questions, and the plan is to go to the library to get some books and find some answers.  But the other day, we were at the beach and the kids collected some seashells.  When we came home, we used our shell identification cards, found here at Homeschool Share, to categorize the shells we found. 

Some were easy to identify, like the cockle shells and the scallops.  

Some were a lot more difficult.  

There were lots of broken pieces.  In that case, we just gave it out best guess.  We've been talking about the word "hypothesis" lately.  

Natalie loved this activity.  Daniel loved watering the plants while Natalie and I identified shells. 

And Silas loved the water ;)