Plants!

Since we are working on starting a garden, Gavin and I are learning all about plants for the next few weeks! I keep forgetting to pick up my camera this week for some reason. We had already planted some vegetables and they are growing and getting bigger! We are very excited to see our little sprouts and watch them grow every day.

So now we are learning about seeds and what makes them grow. We looked in an apple, pear, peach, avacado and cucumber to see the seeds and compare the size, shape, texture, etc. of each food's seeds. Then we looked at the seeds of a tomato Austin was eating and we've noticed that we eat lots of seeds without realizing it. Tuesday we looked inside a lima bean to see what was in there and then we planted lima beans (not the same one obviously). We didn't plant them to put in our garden but just for observing. Today we dug up our first lima bean and observed that it got a lot bigger in the last two days and noticed a crack on the side where the root will come out soon. We'll check again in tomorrow or Saturday. Here is a picture of Gavin planting his lima beans.
He also planted some grass to make hair. We found this little project at Lowe's for $3. It's actually a seal so I'm not sure why we are trying to grow it hair but I guess that's just semantics.
It also has tennis shoes and doesn't look anything like a seal but whatever...

Gavin worked on a ladybug matching game too!

We got out a croquet game that Gavin tried out. I'm not sure he really gets it but I don't know how to play so I can't help and there were no directions so basically he made up his own rules. That works best when you're four anyway!

Every year our local Parks and Rec Department brings out their trucks for kids to look at and climb on. Gavin loves it...he's been asking me when it was going to be for about three months now. Well yesterday was the day! This is our third year and it's exactly the same every year but apparently it doesn't get old because Gavin was giddy with excitement! Since this was the first year it wasn't close to freezing and raining, Austin and I enjoyed it too!

This morning Gavin was sick and stayed home from school. After a long nap, he woke up good as new so we did a carrot artwork project. He colored some carrots and cut strips from construction paper to make the leaves, then he went outside and dug up some dirt, we put in water and Elmer's and mixed it all together...then decided to take the project outside...and he 'painted' his carrots with the mud. He liked this. Although, he was supposed to use his hands but refused to put his hands in the mud so I gave him the spoon we used to mix it with.

Then we worked on digging up a new flower bed in the back of the house. We discovered there are LOTS of worms!!!

Kaitlynn was lots of help digging and so was Austin...but the dirt he picked up seemed to be ending up in his mouth...hopefully it was worm free dirt...