Garden Mountain

One of our families invited us to help plant their garden.  About a month
ago we had a small group visit Vivian and Millie’s house.
       
             
Vivian had an interesting theory; each plant needs a certain depth for their roots so what if the garden was a hill, like a mountain, would everything grow?
 
  
She had a plan drawn explaining where each seed would be planted according
to the space their root needed.
          

We started at the top of the mountain to plant popcorn.

What a great experience to dig into the soil and get our hands dirty pushing the seeds into the ground.  We also practiced sounds of letters to help us decide what each seed started with so we could print the name on a stick.

Can you guess the next seed?  It starts with a ‘k’ sound.

Vivian showed us how to sprinkle the carrot seeds from our fists.


Next was pumpkins that needed to be poked into the soil and covered.

Then we stretched a short fence around half of the mountain to plant peas.  The children measured the depth of the hole by using their finger and planted a seed in front of each fence peg.

Lastly we erected a bamboo teepee.  The children shovelled dirt around the poles to help secure it to the ground.
      
Around each pole they planted beans.  As the beans grow they will climb the pole.
     
We finished gardening by giving the mountain a good rainfall.

One month later
 
Pumpkin,                                                   beans,
 
peas                                                                    and carrots
                                           are all growing. 

Thanks Vivian and Millie for teaching us about seeds and growing a garden mountain.

We’ll be back in the fall to help harvest.

Final Pond Day

Our tadpoles have grown legs but school is closed early because of a
teacher's strike so we made a quick trip to the pond to let them go.         
          
We also had to release a few other creatures that came in with the fresh
                                         water each week.

  We had several different larvae, a fish, teeny bugs and a tiny snail.
             
Lots of questions came out as we spent time watching the tadpoles.  What do they eat?  Do tree frogs grow in trees?  Do toads grow the same as frogs? 
                     Great questions to hold on to for next year.
   
But for today we carefully carried them down to the water and said goodbye.

Spiral Play

                  Spiral Invitation on the Play Tray table last week.

                                         

       
  

Harvesting Spuds–Tub 3

          We finished harvesting our potatoes this week.
                
   
While pulling out the plants we did manage to pull one potato still attached.
       
                 Then they dug in with enthusiasm. 
Some of the children had helped harvest the other tubs and knew what
                       they were digging for.

  
Today we sorted the potatoes by size before figuring out how many.
       
                
        We counted 38 potatoes today for a total of 127
                 from all the plants we grew this year.

Snack today was Potato Hotcakes made from potatoes I cooked and mashed last
                                             night.
        
All the recipes we cooked this week came from Company’s Coming Potato
                                      cook book.
                          

One last recipe we enjoyed was potato candy.
           
Pinwheels
1/3 cup mashed potato
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter (I used almond butter)
Stir potato, vanilla and icing sugar in large bowl until thick (I used more icing sugar then the recipe said).  Turn out onto surface dusted with icing sugar.  Knead until smooth, adding more sugar if necessary to make pliable but not sticky.
Divide into 3 equal portions.  Roll each onto a piece of plastic wrap.  Spread about 1 1/2 tablespoon of the peanut butter and roll up like a jelly roll.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill.

Harvesting Spuds–Tub 2

       
This morning we got busy harvesting a second tub of potatoes. 
        
We really had to dig deep into this tub to find any potatoes.
    
                  But we did and a strange one too.
    
                   But how many in this tub?
   
We laid them all in a straight line and estimated how many before we counted.
                 
                                   Only 31 today!

       
   Back inside we cleaned our new potatoes before we had a snack.
      
                       Boiled potatoes, raisins and tomatoes,
 
                                as well as potato cookies.