Our indoor garden!!!

We have been very enthusiastic with planting things just recently. So much so we can hardly see the kitchen table for greenery! Every time Henry finds a seed he wants to plant it!

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to keep you updated with the growth of our plants...so here goes.

The sunflowers that we planted only last Wednesday, have now popped through the soil today. It appears that we have about 90% germination rate on the home planted seeds.

Henry also planted 3 sunflower seeds at school on the same day and they all appeared today as well...breakfast was exciting as we checked on seed progress!

The beans we planted weeks ago are still healthy and climbing up their little sticks. One may even have flowers developing????

Our cress heads are almost all done now, with just one surviving, they have grown for a whole couple of weeks before we forgot to water the others! This picture was taken a few days ago whilst they were all well alive.

We planted a kit of grow your own sensitive plants a couple of weeks ago. And despite being tipped on the table just after they emerged by an over enthusiastic Henry...we have 50% germination rate. Not bad for a kit costing a whole $1 from Target! They are just starting to develop their second set of leaves.

I planted an avocado seed in water a couple of weeks ago, though i'm not sure if anything is happening! Info i've found suggests maybe a 3-4wk germination on this one, so we shall give it another week and then try again if nothing appears.

Not forgetting the oregano, basil and rosemary on the floor of the dining room and the lettuces which are just about rabbit ready!

Jim Gill Concert

This week seems to be a very cultural one!

This evening we went to a Jim Gill concert held at our local library. For those of you not familiar with his music...he is great! Henry loves all his songs, knows most of the words and loves the actions that go with them.

The sneezing song is a lot of fun, as is the silly dance contest! With out even realising it, Henry is listening to instructions and following them! He is moving and clapping in time to a beat and is singing along and learning words....good thing he thinks it is so much fun!

One of Jim's books May there always be sunshine, was the idea behind one of the projects that Henry has done at pre school. The book asks you to think about what you would always like there to be, and then sing it. Traditional words from the song include "may there always be sunshine, may there always be good times"...whilst the ideas kids add range from ice cream, to dinosaurs thru cake and birthdays...anything goes!

Jim introduced us to his new book and CD "A Soup Opera" tonight. A story all about a man who orders soup in a restaurant then calls for the waiter, police, mayor, president...singing "i can't eat this soup"....you will have to read the book to find out why!

I highly recommend his music. Check out his website for details on his books and music.

www.jimgill.com

Seussical the musical

Yesterday we had a family trip to the theater. We went to see Seussical the musical and it was GREAT.

Henry loves Dr Seuss books, and this show captured his imagination for the full 70 minute long show. Loads of music, dancing, bright costumes and identifiable characters.

No doubt, Dr Seuss books will be high on the agenda for bedtime stories again!

Join the Cat in the Hat in this fantastical, magical, musical extravaganza! Seussical lovingly brings to life all of the favorite Dr. Seuss characters, including Horton the Elephant, Gertrude McFuzz, Lazy Mayzie and all of the Whos of Whoville. These classic, colorful tales are seamlessly brought together by JoJo, a young girl and "thinker of strange and wonderful thinks." Seussical is a musical that appeals to all ages!

Website with synopsis of the story and short clips of the music.

www.mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000229

Caps For Sale

We recently read the book Caps For Sale, written by Esphyr Slobodkina. A tale of a peddler, some monkeys and their monkey business!

A couple of activities that we created to go with the book were a lot of fun.

What you will need:

As many hats/caps of any size, colour or shape as

you can find. Try and provide a variation for the second activity. I searched out my winter and summer hats and my horse riding helmet!

The first thing I did was to balance as many hats/caps/helmets as I could find in the house on my head as I read the book the second time. I got Henry to help as the pile on my head got taller.

I then challenged Henry to balance as many hats as he could on his head. It was a challenge for both of us, with all the hats of different sizes nothing fitted very well together! Half the fun was watching them all topple over.

The second activity was to take photos of each of the hats on Henry's head and create a little book of hats. With the book we did two things:

The first was to find the hat in the pile that matched the hat in the photo.

Second was that we tried to guess who may wear each hat and what they may do wearing it. I tried to spark his imagination with so many winter woolly hats...one we decided was for the snowman, another for a skier, and another for an Eskimo!

These are all the hats Henry tried on and the photos we created for our book.

Sunflower measuring

Ok, so in May there are no sunflowers to measure....so we embraced the whole spring thing, and made our own! You could make any flowers, but i found a template for sunflowers so i went with that one.

This activity is great for developing the concept of measuring, and counting above 20.

You will need:

4 - 8 flower heads - whatever shape or size.

Some green paper cut into strips for stalks

A measuring device - for fun we used a ladybug measure rather than numbers

Small pieces of paper and pens to record the measurements

Some tacky stuff to fix it all to a wall.

I started by sticking 6 flowers to the wall at different heights, then adding their stalks. I then encouraged Henry to measure their heights. He needed my help for the taller ones to hold the measure as he counted, but otherwise he figured out how to hold the tape and count at the same time!

I let him decide which order to measure the flowers. We measured in ladybugs then recorded the number on a piece of paper which we stuck next to the flower head. He wrote the numbers as best he could - all good practice.

After the first three we both started to estimate how many lady bugs tall the other flowers would be. Henry was amazingly accurate and didn't give me wild answers!

With all the flowers measured we then set about measuring each other for a bit of fun. I'd deliberately made the measure tape way longer than we needed. Henry had to stand on a chair to get my height which he though was very funny.

This is a reusable activity, so take everything off the wall and keep safe, then the next time set the flowers at different heights and start all over again!

Tot School

Ok, so i'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing, but i found this great website on home schooling ideas, which runs something called "tot school". The whole idea of blogging  my activities with Henry was to inspire others and share the type of ideas i am always looking for, so love the fact that this site shares so many ideas i can use with Henry.

Each week i will produce a run down of our week's activities, all of which are covered in greater detail in my blog.

So here goes!

This week we planted sunflowers and documented the process to complete challenge #16 with 

handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com

We also took a nature walk around our neighbourhood to spot and photograph all the flowers we could see. Henry loves using my digital SLR..although its a little big for him at present. I got the photos developed and we are now working through them and doing a piece of art and a few lines about each flower to put in our nature journal.

We had a great trip to the aquarium in Chicago this week. I love getting out and about, and Chicago has so many great places to see and do.

We started to develop our recognition of letters and words with a simple activity. Placing flower shapes with letters on at the top of stems to create words. We started with Henry's name then moved onto words with strong letter sounds.

We also did a fun measuring activity. I stuck pictures of sunflowers to the wall at different heights and Henry measured each in number of ladybugs (on the tape). We concluded by measuring each other.

The outdoor hour

I have found a fantastic blog; The handbook of nature study.

handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com

It offers laods of inspiring and simple activities/challenges to get you and your kids out and about noticing the outdoors. It only requires 15 minutes outside for each activity, and this can be in your back yard, the street...wherever.

I will feature a

number of the challenges as we do them.

Our first outdoor challenge is #16 - Growing sunflowers.

This week we planted our sunflowers..alll 50 of them that were in the packet!

Henry got fully involved, puting the soil in the pots, puting the seeds in, covering them up, and watering them.

He got some really good practice with his listening skills, fine motor and measuring as well.

We then did our journal entry, so Henry drew what the sunflower seed looked like and then we described it.

We shall look forward to monitoring the growth of all our sunflowers, and their eventual move into the back yard!

The sunflowers this week.....day 1....not a lot to see!

A further part of this challenge was to take a walk in the neighbourhood to spot any flowers, and journal these. We found so many, its going to take a while to work through them! We found, violets, daffodils, tulips, hyacynths, blossom on the trees and azaleas. Henry and i shared the picture taking during the walk, and will document them gradually!

In the mean time, enjoy the slide show of what we saw!

Make a Smilebox slideshow