Flower Power

This week in school we did a day about "flowers" and plants. Now I am not a gardener by any means. I have one house plant and one hosta plant outside that was here in when we moved in. It is certainly not from lack of trying. As a matter of fact, just this year I gave up trying to get anything to grow and let my "flower bed" go to the lawn mower. So I knew I would need some serious help with this lesson so I called in guest lecturer, Grandma. Just to give you an idea of what I am talking about,

this is my attempt at a "flower bed"

this is one of many of my mother's

so, anyway, since my parent's live next door to us it was the perfect opportunity for the girls to learn some horiculture from the expert. My mom gave them a ride on the tractor around to all her flower beds and showed them which plants like sun and which like shade, when certain plants bloom and when some die. I gave them disposible cameras and they took pictures on their garden tour

Then they planted some seeds with Grandma and she is going to watch over them so they will grow. They also planted a plant shoot from another plant to see which one grows faster.

They went to cut flowers with Grandma to learn how to arrange flowers and press flowers

They each had a canvas and paints to paint the flowers they saw in Grandma's garden This is the first time either one of them has ever painted something that wasn't "in the lines" such as a coloring page. Princess #1 has drawn pictures from her imagination but not looking at something and putting it on a blank paper. It was harder for both of them than I thought it would be. I guess this is something that I didn't realize needed to be taught (oh the things we adults take for granted)

Princess #2's picture (preschool): (as narrated by her), the round colored circles are the flowers, the green on the bottom is grass, the blue line on top is the sky and the yellow circle in the upper left is the sun, the blue in the upper right is a cloud

Princess #1's picture (Kindergarten): (as narrated by her), the blue on the top is the sky, the smilie face in the center under the clouds is God, the pink on the left is flocks, the purple is violets, the yellow is lilies, and the purple on the right is beebalm. The green along the bottom is the grass We then went inside and Mommy became teacher again and we learned about the letter "Ff" and a little about creation. We practiced our new memory verse "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" Genesis 1:1. We made family flowers, by making cutout of each of our hands, including daddy and Princess #3 and pasting them together on a popcile stick

We then went into individual learning time. Princess #1 reviewed the long "a" sound and practiced the "f" sound. She is proficent at beginning constant sounds but not at all familiar with the vowel sounds. With Princess #2 we practiced recognizing the letter "f" and writing it. We also reviewed writing the letter "A". I also am working on number recognition with her. I made this flower planting box by cutting out flowers, putting them on popsicle sticks and putting dots in the middle. Princess #2 then has to count the dots and put in the right slot for that number... still a work in progress for her. (Playing spinner games as helped alot with this too)