Garden Treasures

Spring is here and we are going to have so much fun exploring. Yes, we STILL have to listen to space songs even though it is not about space anymore. They just loved it so much! Our theme for May is Garden Treasures. We grabbed all of our books about plants, food we grow, farmers, farmer’s markets, etc. They love the Shine-a-Light books and we had one for this topic, Secrets of the Vegetable Garden. We have some really fun and silly ones and some that are non-fiction. We love the flap books from Usborne and How Do Flowers Grow? is one of the best. So much information. Did you know that when you read a flap book that it actually HELPS you retain the information you learn when you lift the flat to learn it? We read these together because we want to keep our flaps. Some kids like to rip them out. We love books so much! We will be sharing more of the books we are reading in each school post.

Experience Curriculum has put together an amazing 20 lessons for May. We have four different sub-themes; Planting Gardens, Growing Gardens, Garden Visitors and Garden Vegetables. Each one has five topics. We learn so much more than even the titles tell you. We go as far as the kids want to go to learn. We find kid’s teaching video online to watch that gives them some interesting nuggets of information. And sometimes, we find fun songs. You can find a book read from just about any title you read to the younger kids.

Experience Curriculum always has a monthly theme poster with I Spy glasses. Each one has questions on them to ask the children. They match the picture and we talk about the answer to the questions We put it on the wall with sticky tac and we put a clothes pin on the wall the same way and clip the glasses with it. The children can do it anytime they are between activities. They get a My Little Journal each month with the letters, numbers, shape and color in side with many different types of writing practice, including some beginner writing skills. There are instructions for each page, since the top part of each page is blank. This month they will draw a garden on the cover.

I LOVE how Experience Curriculum gives us these great books. We actually have two on our books shelf from former themes because they have to do with what we are talking about now. These puzzles are great for the younger kids in our school. Three is such a fun age as they learn to do them and then just want to do it over and over. We have a large magnet board on the front door that we use these one. It is an oil pan that we got a the auto parts store. We used command strips to attach it.

Our I Can Read book for this month is What Do You Like? They are learning to put words into sentences. It is fun to play with the different pieces to see what they come up with. They can take the pointers and find those words IN the book. Each child gets one and will take them home at the end of the month, just like their journals.

That is just a glimpse of our month ahead! We have a personal garden growing and the kids have been helping keep an eye on it. We have had apple trees for the last five years. They have been giving us apples for the last two. We now have lemon and lime trees. We got tomato plants and there are actual tomatoes on there at the earliest of stages. We have red and green bell peppers, spaghetti squash, cucumbers and strawberries, too. We are just learning how to make it work but enjoying it very much. Check back to see what we are doing this month!

Remember, There's Adventure Around Every Corner!

*Please note that at this time we were using our "homeschool's name", BCAA.

Original post date May 2, 2021