Gardening

28 February 2012

Today we practiced skip counting by 3's again. Raven knows it very well from 3-30. Our goal is to get to 99. While I was going over skip counting 3's I found several patterns that help me remember it. The first pattern repeats itself every ten numbers. So it repeats after 30, 60, and 90 etc. The second pattern I found was that in the ten number pattern the ones place is never a repeated number.

For example 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30. In this set of numbers the ones place never has the same number. The ones place goes like this 3,6,9,2,5,8,1,4,7,0. If we order those numbers from 0-9 we have 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Pretty neat huh?

The third pattern I found is that the numbers only stay in a given tens digit for three numbers, until we get to the end of the first pattern I mentioned.  

3,6,9 - 12,15,18 - 21,24,27 - 30 - 33,36,39 - 42,45,48 - 51,54,57 - 60 - 63, 66, 69 - 72,75,78 - 81,84,87 - 90

 

When I explained this to my hubby he said I was making it more complicated than I needed to. Perhaps he is right, but it all makes more sense to me this way, thus it is easier for me to remember because I am a very visual learner. I haven't figured out what "kind" of a learner Ra and El are yet (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), so I figure if I start giving them ideas each way I can come up with, I will eventually find that out.

We ran some errands and stopped by the local Nursery and Garden Center on our way home. We asked what it would take to start a garden in our area and if they had any recommendations for us. The "worker" as my kids called him told us all about the clay-like soil in our neck of the woods (to speak figuratively) and how much mulching and fertilizer we would need to use. I thanked him for all his advice and we went on our way home after letting the kids look at all the plants and read their name tags.

At home we decided to start working on the yard. I had showed Ra the weather forecast for the week and today was the "warm before the storm." I explained to her that usually the day before a winter storm, we had a relatively warm day or two.

While raking up leaves from autumn, (I know we are a little slow) the neighbors came over to chat. They were good friends with the two previous families that had lived in our home and so knew quite a lot about it. I asked them about a tree that was still a sapling in our backyard. It is covered in thorns from the base to its highest tip. They said it had been planted as a memorial for the husband who had committed suicide and that the family was going to take it with them when they moved, but they never did.

The neighbors also told us that the fenced in area I had assumed was a garden area had been a horse corral. That absolutely thrilled me because it meant that area was plenty well fertilized for a garden.  No wonder the weeds are so tall in there!

We came inside a had hot chocolate and warmed up a bit and spent some time with the hubby before I sent everyone to get ready for bed. For story time we finished reading the children's abridged version of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.The kids enjoyed it and I hope they followed it. The abridged stories seem to rush through events, not allowing you to get attached to what is going on before something else is happening.