It's Spuds Time

We have participated in the Spuds in Tubs program since 2010.

It's a fantastic program that I would recommend to everyone.

The program includes the tubs, soil, fertilizer and the seeds.

It provides an opportunity to learn about gardening.

This week we filled the five tubs with rich, dark soil.

The children mixed the fertilizer into the soil.

Enjoying the feel and getting dirty.

Next we checked each seed and removed extra sprouts.

The children dug holes in the soil, dropped their seed in

and covered it up.

One more step - water.

Then they rest till we come back from Spring Break.

How much will they sprout?

Growing Candy Canes

Don’t you just love, and hate, browsing through Pinterest and find an idea you just have to do even if time is limited?  That’s what happened this week.
                
123Homeschool4me has shared print outs for growing candy canes.  I love magical activities like this and knew we had to try it even though we had four days left of school before Christmas break.
                             
The seed packet is fantastic in its detail.  Directions of how to plant, with what materials to how long it will take to germinate.  I really appreciated that it looks like a seed packet.
                         
The only change I made was which candy I used as the seed.  That was because being short in time I couldn’t run around to find the red mint candy.  The first store I visited had these Christmas candy corn and candy canes to match in colour – perfect!
    
On Tuesday, I had a smaller group at circle time which worked well for this activity.  I introduced the idea of candy canes growing.  Has anyone ever heard of growing candy canes?  Have they seen a candy cane seed before? 
  
After showing them the package of seeds and what the seeds look like, we filled our planting pot with North Pole Potting Snow.  Each child received a seed to plant in the pot. 
                
We left the North Pole fertilizer for children that would be attending an evening session that night.  But we ended up being busy doing other activities and forgot.
                        
The seeds didn’t need it.  We were thrilled to find that they had sprouted overnight. There were lots of candy canes at all different heights.
      
At the end of this morning, as the children were leaving, I reminded them of what the seeds looked like then they harvested a candy cane.  The roots were long and they had to brush off the snow.
                       
                  The best part was the Merry Christmas hugs. 
       Be sure to visit 123Homeschool4me to access the printables.

Finishing Planting a Promise Project

Our daffodils bloomed this week so it was time to do our last measure of
                                            the plants.
  
The plants grew so much over Spring Break that we needed to use two rulers to
                                get the full height.

    
After measuring we gathered on the grass to draw and paint what we saw.
 
         
I provided a heavier paper with wax crayons, pencil crayons and water paint.
 

When finishing a project I like to share it with the whole school and the
         easiest way is to post it on our bulletin board in the hallway.
 
   The pictures along the bottom explains our story from the beginning,
                                    November to today.
              
A big thank you to BC Agriculture for providing us this opportunity
                to learn more about the life cycle of daffodils.

What Happened at School during Spring Break

The past two weeks has been our school district’s spring vacation.  Tomorrow will be our first day back and I’m looking forward to it.  I enjoy the time off but also really like my job and the all the people that come in to play.

          
   While we were away change has been happening in our classroom. 
                     The first is our spuds have sprouted. 
   
Tomorrow we’ll spend some time ‘hilling’ the potatoes.  This means we will pile soil around each of the stems so just the top leaves are poking through. 
         
We hill the spuds for a couple of reasons:
1) the loose soil encourages the potatoes to expand easier
2) to keep the potatoes well covered so they are not exposed to the sun and turn green, which are not the best to eat.
3) hilling keeps the plants better drained and more productive.
Plus it's fun to get our hands in to the soil.

Another change are our daffodils, they have started to bloom.
              
We’ll take paint, pencils and pastels outside for an art session in the garden.

One final change is something we didn't plan.
       
The sand box has been covered for the whole two weeks and it looks like some
       popcorn kernels were left buried and have now sprouted.

I hope to get some photos of the children (and adult's) faces when they see that our sand box is now a jungle.  I wonder what they think we should do with the plants.

Planting a Promise Update

We’re half way through our Spring Break and I’m still catching up on blog posts.
                    This activity we did just before our break.
    
I was worried that our daffodils might bloom while we were away so we did
                       one last check and measure.
                     
       The stems are getting tall and we can see a bud forming.
 
We recorded what we saw; the height and what the plant looks like.

     
      Our new graph that shows the growth of each child’s plant.

The side note in pink explains that it snowed a lot on those dates and
                slowed the growth of the plants.

Measuring our Planting a Promise Garden

Spring has sprung at our end of the country and believe it or not our flowers are
                                     starting to come up.

When we came back to school, from Christmas break, I noticed our Planting a Promise garden had tiny green shoots.  Our daffodils are sprouting.  Time to begin
                                          measuring.
                         
   I packed our nature bags with clipboard, a post it note, pencil and a ruler.
         
                 This is our second week measuring the plants.
   Each family tried to find the same plant that they measured last week.
    
Once they found it we were ready to mark it with a name stick so
                each week we’ll know which plants to measure.
               
Working with rulers is new for our children and one lesson we learned was to
          turn the ruler so the low numbers 1,2,3… started at the ground.
     
After they counted how tall the sprout was they then recorded it on their
                                               post-it note.

                       Printing the number and drawing a picture. 
         
  This is our chart where we have been and will continue to record our findings.
                       
Each week we’ll check the growth and predict what number our plant will
                                   be at before we measure.
              
                  In one week the plants grew one centimeter.