Raking

5 March 2012

What a gorgeous day. It had to be at least 65 degrees outside. I took the opportunity to begin raking up all the leaves from fall. The plan is to slowly work my way from the front of the yard all the way to the back, where my garden will be.

It was the first time I have taken Em outside to play since it has been winter since she has been able to crawl. She loved it! First I had her in her play pen with some toys, but after a while she wanted out, so I let her crawl around. She loved the grass and followed me around the yard cooing and babbling. It was so precious.

I took a break from raking and we took a walk around the block. On our walk I talked to Ra about why we were growing a garden. I explained that healthy foods have what we call nutrition. Nutrition comes from nutrients found in plants. Healthy, nutritious foods are things that are grown. This will hopefully be a good basis for discussion when it comes to meal times and food complaints! Ra will be able to decide whether or not she wants to eat the food based a knowledge of its nutrients, not just its looks. We have already previously discussed that healthy foods help keep you from getting sick and she understands and appreciates that concept.

On our walk Em fell asleep in the stroller she was so tuckered out from her first day exploring the outdoors. I put her in her crib, made lunch and then headed back out to the yard for more raking. The kids played around the yard, digging in the dirt, hanging on the willow branches, and making secret hideouts in the plum grove. When the hubby arrived home we started pulling weeds in the garden area, which is no small task considering our garden is 900 square feet and all weeds. We stopped about dinner time and while the hubby had the kids help straighten the house I made dinner.

After dinner we watched an episode of BBC's Top Gear on request from Ra much to the delight of the hubby. When the episode was over Ra read a few passages from Mosiah in the Book of Mormon then I read some of the abridged children's version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Howard Pyle.

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.

Electrical Gardens

25 February 2012

This morning we had breakfast then went (with the keys this time!) to get my husbands paycheck and we ran a few other errands on the way home. Ra listened to and read along with the read-along books we checked out from the library. I went over some of the facts of George Washington's life while we were in the car as well. I read them a few poems about George Washington that I had found online as well. I also started introducing the kids the the colors in German. Rot, orange, gelb, grun, blau, lila, schwarz, weiss, braun, silbern, and golden. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, brown, silver, and gold.) Time in the car has been greatly under-utilized by me and I hope to remedy that with exciting discussions and topics and books to listen to and memorization drills.

We had lunch and cleaned house a bit when we arrived home and after lunch the hubby pulled out an electricity science project kit we had bought for our kids a while ago but had not opened yet. I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I sat back and listened to the hubby explain what a "circuit" was to the kids and how electricity works. I put in my two cents now and again when I felt I had an insight I could share or another way of explaining something that the kids might be able to understand easier. We all had a good time with it.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon planning my garden and doing research on how much to grow and where to grow certain plants in relation to other plants. I decided which plants I want to start with this year, instead of jumping headlong into a large variety garden my first year doing one on my own. While graphing out my garden on graph paper I explained to Ra what a Ratio was. I told her that for every two squares on my graph paper that showed one foot in actual garden. I told her we do this most often to scale down things into workable sizes. I couldn't very well draw out the garden on a piece of paper as big as the garden because then I may as well just do it in the garden itself. I still have a lot of planning to do, but this is a good start.

After a very good dinner the kids played around and Ra helped tend Em while the hubby and I set up my computer with Call of Duty 4 so that I could play it with him for a bit. It was fun to just chill and take a bit of time to relax from the studies I have been involving myself in during my spare time. Unfortunately the play time ran over and we didn't have time to read our kids a story before bedtime. But I was able to get in some valuable leisure time which I have been needing, but having been allowing myself. 

The kids and I also finished the Log Cabin out of twigs we started yesterday. I will post pictures of it soon. I absolutely love how it turned out.