life-is-learning: Nature

Showing posts with label Nature. Show all posts

Friday, April 22, 2011

Gardening with Gumby: First Starter Seeds

I am finally getting around to posting pictures of our seeds that we have started for the garden! We are having a lot of fun with this project. We haven't had a garden for several years and are looking forward to it now that I will have more time because I stay home with Gumby. This is also something we think she will enjoy and we are sure she will learn a lot.
We have never started any garden veggies from seeds before, ever. This, like anything else in life, is a learning experience for the whole family.

We went to a couple of stores and let Gumby pick out the seeds herself. She had a lot of fun doing this. It gives her ownership on the project and lets her know she is a contributing member of the family. We didn't worry about the few things she picked out that we don't really care for - we're going to grow them and try them and let her try them. We try not to limit her tastes and preferences because of our own. She was so excited.

We also picked some neat looking plants such as the Carnival Peppers (purple, white, yellow, orange) and Chili Peppers.

To start the plants, we got a couple of those seed starting kits with the pods. They are cute and Gumby had fun investigating the pods while they were little dry disks. We all enjoyed pouring warm water on them and watching them expand.

We started planting around the end of March and did maybe 18 plants each evening once every few days or a week. It was the right amount of time that Gumby would enjoy planting before getting bored.

Choosing a spot to place the next two pepper seeds.

Carefully placing 2 pepper seeds.

Covering the seeds.

What we have so far: Eggplant (which has mostly died :( by the time I am writing this), Celery (tiny, TINY seeds so we have way more than the suggested 2-4 per pod), Carnival Peppers, Tomatoes and Cayenne Peppers.

The first thing we planted was celery and this is how it looked as it started to come up.
Gumby likes checking in on the plants and seeing their progress :)

This is how the seedlings are coming along today.

The first column on the left are the tomatoes.
The next 4 and a half are the 2 types of peppers. You'll notice they have tan soil. Peppers took the longest by far to come up. And, before they sprouted, the pods were encased in this fuzzy white stuff I had never seen before. Thanks to the internet, I learned it was called "dampening off" and is a fungus that grows if the pods are too moist from having the lid on, etc. I found a few natural remedies that did the trick: a strong batch of chamomile tea and cinammon, which not only gave it the tan color and got rid of the fungus, but it made it smell great too! The fungus is mostly harmless as long as it doesn't overtake the seedlings. And, as a side note to "getting rid" of it, I don't think you ever really get rid of it once it's there (bummer), but you can easily control it.
The next 2 and a half are what remains of the eggplants :( I don't know what went wrong here. They came up just fine. You'll notice a couple of the pods are missing. I gave them to my mom. I think hers are still doing okay.
The final 4 rows are the celery which seem to be doing okay. I should probably thin them out. Mom got 2 of these also.

In exchange, Mom gave me 2 wonderful little basil starts with a clever plant marker made with a plastic spoon and marker :) My mom is clever like that :)

As shown below, Gumby is having a rockin' good time with the family garden! :)
I can't wait until we give her a garden sensory box ... but that is a post for another day! :)

Are you starting a garden? What did you plant?
Do you have any tips for involving toddlers?

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Gumby's World: 2/12/2011-2/28/2011

The Gumby's World series is a journal of how we spend our days with Gumby :)

Two weeks ago was exciting as we had a glimpse of the spring weather that is soon to come!

It was also exciting because Gumby's vocabulary and thirst for knowledge just continues to swell right in front of our very eyes. She has picked up "Yep!" and "Nope!" from I'm not sure where, but it is so cute. And, she is asking all sorts of questions that she has never asked before. She wants to know where everybody goes and what they are doing. She notices background noises and asks what it is. In the car, when we arrive at our destination she asks "Where you gonna park, mamma?" She is always so inquistive and eager to learn about her environment.

We took advantage of the warm weather and spent lots of time outside.

Gumby couldn't wait to take her love for art back to the outdoors on the front porch with her chalk!

We also spent the better parts of several days out and about!

Gumby has been big into going to the library again. She likes to play the computer games with me. There are a few that she likes to use the mouse or keyboard for, but a lot of them she points or tells me what to click on. There is one where you can play music to put animals to sleep, feed them or play with them and she thinks it's hilarious. Sometimes, the music makes them dance and she yells "Don't do the jig, go to sleep!" :)

The library has these foam fishes that we've been sorting and putting together by color. Over the summer we made choo-choo's out of the fish, as in the photo, but the color sorting was new. She took it very seriously. I think it's important to remember that in the eyes of children, their play is just as serious as any work us adults undertake.

Gumby almost always helps me clean up. It is her choice and she rarely refuses. But, on the times that she does, I am okay with it. Surely, there are times she asks me to do things and I refuse. Autonomy is a basic human need, important to those who are both big and small, old and young. I want her to help me and others, not because of a threat of punishment or consequences nor because of a promise of a reward or bribe, but because she truely wants to, because the motivation comes from within her. For that to be the case, it always has to be her choice, her decision.

We met Deeda for lunch at the park and then stayed to play. Her and Deeda just love being barefoot. They are talking me into it. There is a lot of sensory experiences to be had when your feet are bare which is probably why Gumby and most other children enjoy it so much.

She played on 2 different play grounds, climbed, went down slides and rode this duck. There is also a quarter mile track that surrounds the local highschool football field. I think it's a quarter of a mile all the way around it. She walked just about the entire track!

We took Gumby bowling for the second time, this time to a bowling alley that has these ball ramps that the ball can be placed on and toddlers can give them a shove to get them down the lane. Gumby enjoyed this. We explored a toy store that had wooden toys out to be played with, played in the mall play area, and went to the book store.

We brought home a 3' by 2' floor puzzle which is really neat and lots of fun.

At home we did molding with her model magic foam/clay, colored, read books, read her new purchased and library books and played with the nanobugs and iPad.

While reading, she started pointing at the words in the book and saying the letters. She knows most of the letters, lower and upper case. Chica Chica ABC has been a great book for showing lowercase letters in very large print and she likes to name them as they go up the coconut tree in the story.

Another new thing she has started doing is wanting to hold hands when we are out and about <3 And, wanting to walk from the parking lots to the store (holding hands required here of course!).

As the weather got colder, we spent less time outside! Gumby is not big on cold weather. She only likes to play outside in the cold occassionally. When we woke up to about 8 inches of snow, she wanted go to outside to see it, did not want to walk in it, and wanted to sled ride with Mamma ... once. That was it :)

When the temperatures get more around the mid 30's and higher though, she likes walking in the show paths that Deeda shovels for her and making "paw prints" <3

We are still thinking spring and took a little sneak peak at the sandbox and added a few snow sculptures to it :)

Gumby and I spend our days immersed in play. She is constantly learning what she wants, when she wants and how she wants without having to separate life experiences into subjects or play time versus learning time. It is all intermingled, inseparable and fun. We follow her interests wherever they lead and encourage her to explore her world. It is impossible to go through life, even one day, and not learn something - try it! All learning is valuable. Life is learning.