Spring Studies: Seeds and Plants, Egg and Bird Life Cycle

 Plants: Seeds, Roots, and More

I read What Do Roots Do? by Kathleen V. Kidlinski, The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, and Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser.  Trust's and Liv's Weekly Readers also talked about plants and what they need.  Trust and Liv also watched two videos on TV: "Where Do Plants Come From?" and "How Do Plants Grow?", both New Dimension Media videos available for free with Amazon Prime.

We were reading the roots book outside, and (it has probably been since this time last year that I've read that book) when we got to the page where there were carrots, Trusten exclaimed, "That's what they look like under the ground?"  He immediately yanked up a clump of plant(s) from the ground and examined the roots.

I must say I absolutely love the illustrations in that book.  The illustrator is David Schuppert, and I'm so amazed at the job he did on that book.  All the leaves on all those trees, how they were all so well done...so, so, so many leaves.  He did a great job on everything.

It's planting time! We got out our seeds from the back of the refrigerator and surveyed what we had.  So many different things to choose from (including eggplant, which caused me to ask why on earth we had that, as I am certain we all absolutely despise it).  We chose:

*Cucumbers (two kinds)

*Lettuce (two kinds)

*Spinach

*Tomatoes (three kinds)

*Hot peppers (one kind)    

*Watermelon (one kind)

*Cantaloupe (one kind)

*Corn (one kind)

*Squash (one kind)

*Carrots (one kind)

I think that's it.  Nathan doesn't think the carrots will grow in our soil.  They didn't at our last place while we've lived up here, and our friends also said they couldn't grow carrots up here.  I sure hope they do, though, because my sweet Trusten loves carrots so much, and that is what he planted.  He wasn't even excited about gardening at all (rather grumpy about it, as a matter of fact), until he brightened with the thought that me might have carrots seeds.  When I told him we could plant carrot seeds, he got very excited and said he wanted carrots.  (I always keep the refrigerator stocked with carrots.)  He was warned about the low probability that they'd grow.

Liv helping plant the corn (Yep, ROCKY soil! Hey, it's the Ozarks.)

Trust placing his carrot seeds in their row

It doesn't really take much for me to make a reason to make chocolate mousse.  Oh, is sooo good.  (Did I mention I've got some chocolate-oat-coconut-peanut-butter stuff in a dish right now that I'm thinking of snacking on???)  Well, the kids love the chocolate mousse, too.  Actually, let me clarify.  Liv says she hates it, and indeed she never eats much.  I'm kind of thinking maybe she just needs two or three spoonfuls...maybe that's all she can take. It is very chocolatey.

So my excuse?  REASON.  Yes, my reason was so the kids could "plant" some seeds.  We used pomegranate seeds (with the delicious juice still intact, of course).  

I also gave the kids some gummy worms.  You can get vegetarian "all natural" (as natural as a gummy worm can get) sour worms made by Surf Sweets.  (The plain contain pork gelatin, so I don't recommend those.)

A Bird's Life Cycle

Mother eastern Phoebe

 

One of the eggs (this was a surprise to me, but this is William's way) April 15, 2013

The momma bird sitting on her eggs (April 30, 2013)

Baby birds, day four after hatching, I think, possibly day five (May 6, 2013)

Babies on day eight or nine after hatching (May 10, 2013)

Trusten also asked me one day, when I was using an egg to bake something, how an egg yolk turns into a chicken, so I had to explain that the yolk is what fed it, then I showed him the place in the egg where the chicken was formed and explained how you can tell whether the egg has been fertilized by the male rooster or not, then I grabbed my iPhone (handy, because I always keep it on top of my grain mill during the day, if I don't have possession of it) and showed him pictures in Google images of the development cycle, including a real-life picture of a mostly-developed chick (not sure what kind of bird) inside the egg.


 Jaden's Baked Goods

Jaden William loves to bake, and he loves to experiment.  Both the following are two things he whipped up by himself, with no guide, just throwing together ingredients, and they were good.  I enjoyed the latter item.  All the kids loved them both (I'm just not fond of red raspberries, which is an ingredient in the first. 
 

L: Red raspberry and raisin cookies; R: strawberry and raisin cakes

 

Trusten's Drawing

One of his shaping extravaganzas

Olivia's Adventures

She went and fetched Little Hen by herself.  She ran happily across the yard to show us (not pictured here, but definitely got it captured).

 Many of you know this isn't a first...far from it.  Right after I snapped the second picture (after she got back to the source), she said, "Momma, I look like Batman."  She is sooo funny!

I'm going to post some nature pictures in a separate blog post, mostly pictures taken on a Sabbath a few weeks ago.  

Until next time...

Flowers, Floodwater, Snakes, and Worms

Throughout spring the boys picked bouquets for me.  Well, mostly Jaden William picked flowers for me, but Trusten picks flowers, too, so he added to the arrangements.  I've been needing some more flower vases for awhile, and I finally got some at the thrift store.  Now I don't have to have my flowers in a Coca-Cola glass that a relative gave me from McDonald's.  Here are some pics of the beautiful bouquets my sweet boys picked for me:

Some pictures of some unidentified, never-seen-before types of mushrooms on our property (anyone know?), a picture of what my red honeysuckle looks like this year, and a couple pics of the latest snake he caught (Western Ribbon Snake, a type of garter snake):

Now for a picture of the boys hanging out together on the hill off our back deck before it was covered with the summer weeds,  a picture of Liv in the shower after one of her mudfests, and some pics of all three kids playing in their much-beloved spring yard flood:

Earthworms!

In the next post I'll talk about Trusten's 4th birthday and the last of God's spring feasts, Pentecost.  After that, I'll talk about JW's birthday and our butterfly garden.  Next week starts the boys' swimming lessons, and also JW turns eight.  We're planning to take him for a flight in a private plane.  He'll get some new books and other things.  He's read all of his Cul-de-Sac kid books and only has three of his historical graphic novels left, so he'll get some more of the latter.  It's cool how much he reads about and then tells me.

He asked me not too long ago who William Clark was.  I said, "Wasn't that Lewis' travel partner when they explored up and down the Mississippi River?"  He said he thought so.  I told him we could look it up in the encyclopedia.  We've done this with several things recently, but this is the example I remember.  It gives him practice on looking up things in reference books.  I do this with dictionary skills, too, when he asks about words.  Anyway, I guided him through looking up William Clark, and I told him to read the entry.  He read part of it, enough that we confirmed that is who it was.  I asked him how he knew about him, and he said he'd read about him on Poptropica.  That's an online game he play sometimes.  He sometimes interacts (to an extent, as you can choose things to say from options, not just type whatever you want) with other kids, asking them to play certain activity competition games on there, etc.  He also reads and learns things on there. 

Well, this is it for now.  I included mostly pictures, little typing, as I'm so behind. 

Until next time....