Landscaping

Our garden is in the ground! Before:



After:
We have squash and cucumbers in the bed closest to the camera and tomatos, strawberries and carrots in the far bed. I wanted to plant corn and potatoes but we don't have space. I also planted some blueberry bushes I bought last week at the farmer's market. We won't get blueberries this year but hopefully we'll get some next year. A little disappointing, but it gives us something to look forward too! And, I think the egg carton planters worked just fine!

Of course, all this planting took lots of work. Gavin was a big help! We (and by we I mean Steven) dug out beds and Gavin and I planted sunflowers and morning glories by the deck. We planted 12 foot sunflowers and 6 foot sunflowers. I had read that if you plant morning glories next to sunflowers they will climb up the sunflower stalk but we will see.

Gavin's tools are from a Montessori catalog. I love Montessori stuff! Gavin likes having stuff that is just like Mom and Dad and his garden tools should last a long time because it's metal and wood not plastic!

Steven dug out the front flower bed and I planted some flowers from roots. Hopefully they will grow! Here's what it looks like now (I had to plant around the tulips.).

Not much to look at is it!

Yesterday Austin was standing holding on to the couch and Gavin and I moved into the kitchen so we weren't in the living room with him anymore. Austin got upset because he wanted to follow us but didn't know how to get off the couch so Gavin ran over and very gently helped him down by pulling him down on top of him so Austin wouldn't get hurt. That didn't explain it very well but I did get this cute picture of Austin giving Gavin a 'thank you' look and a pleased 'helper' Gavin!

Here is Austin standing next to the tub on Sunday. He's so cute when he stands!

This morning Kaitlynn and Austin were playing in the playroom. Kaitlynn had the fox puppet and was using it to 'eat' Austin's head. They both thought this was hilarious!

And, Kaitlynn is finally tall enough to climb onto the bouncy horse...okay, she needed a little help still but she was very happy to be on it.
While Austin was napping this afternoon, Gavin and I read 'The Tiny Seed' by Eric Carle. It tells the story about how a seed travels around and finally starts to grow. We also read a book about worms that explained how they help plants grow. Then Gavin colored a sunflower, cut out the parts (I did the flower but he cut out the stem and leaf), glued it to a piece of paper, drew in the roots, glued sunflower seeds in the middle of the flower and then labeled the parts: flower, seeds, stem, leaf and roots!

He also did a simple duck addition worksheet. I've been giving him simple addition to work on, like this one showed a picture of two ducks in a pond, then a picture of two more ducks coming to join them and then asked how many ducks were in the pond. Then you write in the number sentence and answer. So I thought this would be a little advanced for him but in the last couple of weeks he has been adding things all by himself. He still has to count things out to get the answer, but he says X plus X equals and then counts to get the answer so I think he at least gets what addition is. He is good at math concepts.

After our activities, Gavin worked on word blends at a website called starfall.com. It's a great website! He learned his letters and the sounds they make using it and now he is onto blends.

Then we went outside and Gavin blew some bubbles for his little brother!

That's been our weekend and week so far! It was really busy but we got a lot done!