Flower Power

After drying the flower off and then cutting off the blossom...Luke discovered water dripping out of the cut end of the stem.

 Things are almost all melted outside and our plants are just starting to poke their heads out of the ground....but over at Mom and Dad's the daffodils are in full bloom...

It's time for our tradition plant unit. 

We have been busy planting seeds indoors, in ziploc bags and soon we will begin our bean pole teepee.

After discovering flowing water from the stem, Luke carefully removed the outside of the stem...he found the veins which were holding the water. 

 Kimmy, digging into her flower, or second flower....or third flower.

 We found all the parts of the daffodil blossom. Ovary is above.

 Actually are they just seeds or do we call them eggs at this point?

 We dissected our flowers on black construction paper.  This really helped us "see" the individual parts of the flower...especially the pollen.

We have put this visual up on our learning wall....Happy Spring Homeschooling everyone.

May--Kiwi Crate

The month of May's Kiwi Crate has been a big hit around here.

Farm Fun is the topic...and Kim and Luke just love growing anything.

I was very pleased with the little "garden" the kids put together.

The provided radish and grass seeds began to sprout the day after planted which was a big plus for children with little patience.

There is a chart to draw the progress of the seedlings.

We have also planted a sunflower house and two flower pots full of beans.

The farm animal finger puppets are very cute.

Kim made these with zero help from me.

In honor of our gardening, we read aloud:

Miss Rumphius

The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds

How Flowers Grow

Planting our  beans

Luke planting the sunflower house.

Our beans made it!!

We have never planted a garden, but every spring we learn about seeds and plants and I always dream of raised beds.  But for this year, my littlest students planted 5 beans seeds and we have been watching them grow.  They have watered them everyday...(we are in the middle of a drought)...we saw the blossoms and then the teeny tiny beans began to grow.

Today our bean plants blessed us with 2 handfulls of beans!!

I was impressed by the yeild...and there are many other little beans just starting top grow.  I may let the new beans continue to grow and dry out and try and plant them next year.  That will be a real, complete, life cycle of a bean 

Science Sunday--Learning about seeds

Spring is having a hard time arriving in our neck of the woods, so I thought I would try and speed things up a bit by doing a plant and seeds unit with my kindergarteners.

I used the book Oh Say Can You Seed? as out main guide for this unit. It is the perfect mix of information, using a rhyming text for my 4 and 5 year olds. The first activity we did was to soak bean seeds in water overnight. The next day we examined our seeds. The kids were very excited to be able to find all the parts of the seed...... including the cute little bean embryo.
We then lined a jar with papertowels. Then we gently put several bean seeds between the glass jar and the papertowel.

We were careful to keep the papertowel wet, and then we waited to see what would happen.

While we waited I found this great Garden Preschool Pack at HomeschoolCreations.

Make sure to head over to HomeschoolCreations and check out all free printables available.

We also discovered the hidden "star" in an apple. We also found a lot of seeds!

After 4 days, our bean seeds began to sprout!

At 17 days, we had these marvelous bean plants.

Luke is examining the original seed on his bean plant.

Happy science, everyone!!

Day 10- we have pumpkin and sunflower sprouts!!

10 days ago Kimberly carefully planted her sunflower seeds into the ground. She has been taking very good care of them.
On day 8, we had several sprouts. I love this one still wearing her sunflower seed hat.

Day 10---something has eaten about half of the newly sprouted sunflower seeds, so now, hopefully, we will end up with a "sunflower wall"

Mark's hard work has also paid off!!

He has two hills of absolutely gorgeous tiny pumpkin plants. ( Our goal is to get one pie pumpkin out of our first pumpkin planting experience---keep your finger crossed.)

Stayed tuned for exciting updates as the days roll on into summer.

Carrot Cooking Camp

We have joined the online Kids Cooking Summer Camp, and the first "camp week" subject was carrots.

Of course, the first thing a did was go to the library and find books with a carrot theme. Our two favorite books were The Enormous Carrot and The Giant Carrot. These books are loosely based on a Russian folktale. The kids had fun comparing the two books. They also noticed the similarity to the story of the Trojan Horse in the first of these books.
Doing activities with carrots fit nicely into our plant study that we did last week.Just last week, the picture above shows our carrot scraps we were hoping would grow.
Our picture today shows the growth our carrot has had. We are going to try to plant it into dirt soon. We don't really know what will happen to it-but that is what science is all about.
We ended our carrot fun with a yummy recipe for carrot cake. The kids did discover that shredding carrots can be a dangerous job!
This is Gracie, moments before she shredded a little bit of her finger along with the carrot.
Don't worry though, a band-aid took quick care of it.

A lot of cooks in the kitchen.
Yummy, yummy!

A cake and daughter as pretty as a picture!

UPDATE: This is the yummiest carrot cake that we have ever had!!

It's all about seeds and plants this week

If you have early elementary aged children at home, this is the only book you need to do a very full study into the world of seeds and plants.
It is full of very simple experiments and activities that are very "mother" friendly. One such activity is seeing if we could grow a plant from kitchen scraps.We are beginning to see teeny, tiny progress.
We did the ever popular "sprout a bean seed in a paper towel lined glass".

We then had an interesting time taking apart our sprouted seed and checking out all the parts.
We left a couple of the seeds in the glass to continue to grow. The sprout above and the sprout below
are the same plant within two days.
We have now transplanted our beans and hope to transplant them one more time outdoors to eventually grow some of our own beans.
Gracie made this cute little seed booklet. It is from Enchanted Learning website. You will find many, many activities to add to your plant unit here.