Spring Time - Summer Time

The first day of Spring has arrived. (Our anniversary - 36 years was on the first day of Spring) I just love Spring Time!!  Fall is fabulous with the cooler weather after Summer.  Winter is pretty spectacular with the many cool things to celebrate.  But Spring.... this is the time of New Beginnings.

New plants, new flowers, watching seedlings grow, watching seeds sprout roots and stems in little baggie terrariums taped to windows.  It doesn't get much better than this.  So many fun science experiments to enjoy and learn from!

To date we have added more plants to the butterfly garden with children helping.  We added a few herbs for butterflies to lay eggs on, and also flower plants for butterflies and bees to sip nectar.  We will learn about pollination as we watch the butterflies and bees flying and landing on our flowers.

Our tomato plants have already had blossoms grow and tomatoes have begun growing.  This is actually our second go around with the tomato plants.  The first blooms and beginning tomatoes a few weeks ago were removed by the children.  We had a teachable moment talking about how the tomatoes can grow, and can't be eaten yet because they aren't ripe yet. They have been very good about looking with their eyes now. They are also learning to water plants at the roots, or water the dirt around them.  They do love watering every day.  They can water the tomato plants, the herbs in the grow boxes, and the butterfly plants in the butterfly garden and the wheat that has sprung up the day we combined mud play for the pigs with wheat berry play for the rest of the farm animals when we included the farms and animals outside. 😉 The Tower garden (a vertical, aeroponic growing system, allows you to grow up to 20 vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers in less than three square feet—indoors or out.) has its own water system to water the roots so we check it every day to see the progress. These seedlings have only been in for a week so they are not very big yet.  

The three and four year olds have learned the many parts of plants and the words for them.  The seed, root, shoots, seedlings, leaves, plant, petal, soil or dirt, stamen, pistil, ovule, and how pollination works to make the fruit of the plant or seeds.  They have learned that plants need sun, water, and soil to grow. We will dissect a flower next week to see what it looks like on the inside.  

The 1 & 2 year olds have learned that it is important it is to water plants and some of them have learned to water the dirt around the plants instead of on top of the plant.