Garden

So, this is our first really big garden.  Our first garden in our new house.  About 40 foot rows, I'd say.  Two of them now contain seed potatoes.  One-broccoli.  Half rows each of carrots, onions, green leaf lettuce  and spinach.   Yippee!!!!  We are sooo excited.  I also must say that I have a fabulous set of neighbors.  Mr. L has been plowing our ground for us for several weeks to get it ready.  He also did the potatoes, all we had to do was prep them and put them in the row.  He ran through it and  did all the hard work.  Soooo thankful!  Now, we've begun to pray for rain and for the Lord to bring His harvest.

Valentine

My first attempt at these since my old fashioned metal pancake shaper-thinggees got tossed out.  I love this gadget my dear sister gave me for Christmas.  You can shaped it into any shape at all.  There are measurement lines for the bisquick or whatever and the liquid and you just shake it together and shape it as it goes into the pan.  It was soo easy!  And made me feel like a great Mom since the kiddos were super excited about these!

Five in a Row ~ Miss Rumphius Day 3

Here we are, Day 3  with Miss Rumphius from Five in a Row .   Just after our family Bible reading was over, dd5 asked to read to us.  So she did:)  I love it.  She remembers most of what's happening on each page and tells the story (narration) as she shows us the pictures.  It's such a sweet minute in the morning.

Next we got started by reading our book, Miss Rumphius and learning about bushel and peck measurements.   She sure had a LOT of seeds to sow!  Since it isn't lupine planting season just yet, we 'planted' our own.  I used large packing paper (just because I had it from our recent move) and  each child used finger/thumb prints to creat lupines to scatter about their "lane".  There is a separate little hallway to the children's bedrooms, so they'll be able to enjoy their own work.

We also re-placed our story disk, this time letting our youngest do that.  And she remembered!  We did copywork from the story as well as discussion of deserts.  I have to do plenty of animal studies for my boys.  They love animals, especially snakes and such.  I couldn't just mention things that live in deserts or something about a desert where Miss Rumphius might have visited.  I have to go all the way.  For them. :) 

I have these little habitat books called, "One Small Square".  This one is about deserts.  LOTs and lots of cool info there for guys.  Here, at the end of the book is a matching page.  Nate is trying to find some creatures whose silhouettes must be matched with the actual picture in the 'one small square' that he read about.

We also did a few math word problems that go along with the story from the Homeschoolshare site.  We only did three of those today.  I will pick and choose a few per day, since we do our regular math text throught the week for 2nd grade.  My K student did the counting for us as we did the figures on those problems ;)

Yes, we add a little extra to FIAR.  Not a whole lot, just enough to expand and go a little further.  Honestly, we have to school for 4.5 hours here and it makes those  hours a little more fun!

Five in a Row ~ Miss Rumphius Day 2

Miss Rumphius, Day two was a hit!  We began with reading  the story.  We discussed personification.  We also did a little seed graph worksheet that I took from an Old, out of print teacher's science book of worksheets.  They loved coloring the seeds and graphing them.  It was very simple, and my 2nd grader did help out my K student.  He got a chance to lead/teach, too.

Also, we read through the page on plants and seeds from a text that we had around here.  I'm not a fan of texts for a whole lot.  I just did it because it had some cool pictures in it and it told the children to soak a few beans in water to see them sprout.  So they did.  They had to read and follow directions for themselves and they were all too happy to do so!. 

Then, we took a brief walk outside for a nature walk.  We discussed a few plants whose seeds spread by wind.  I am ashamed to say that I don't know what they are yet because we've only lived here a few months and we have yet to see a full bloom of all that is growing in our yard.  But we could see that the seeds would drop and fly away.  They also discussed that they had seen a few 'hitchhikers' on the dog the other day.  And of course, how birds  help to displace seeds as well. 

We checked our seeds that were planted but nothing has come up yet so patience will be the theme there. 

Most of these activities today had no paperwork involved.  FIAR really can be a simple way for your children to learn.