Crawling around

We have really brought the outdoors inside these days.  The few tadpoles that are left are still growing.  We have an assortment of vegetable plants growing, some are a mystery because the kids planted seeds on their own and sprinkled seeds all over.  Oh well, makes for a good classification lesson. 

Lately, we have been studying butterflies and bugs.  You know the kids are learning when a mom tells you her child insisted the butterfly lives in a chrysalis and not a cocoon.  LOL  The tiny ants have come back to visit our snack area.  Not to many, but enough for the kids to observe an ant lifting 10-50 times its weight.  We collect what we find and store them in our bug pod.  One day an ant was carrying a large grain of rice.  Today we studied different kinds of bees.  A while back I collected a yellow jacket, so today we had a look under the magnifying glass.  The yellow jacket lost its head by the end of the lesson.  We will end the unit with a field trip to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle.  I am thinking a Friday in June.  At the center, we will be able to visit the butterfly room, see an honeybee hive and so much more relating to bugs.  Should be fun!!

So far we have green thumbs!  All the seeds are growing quickly. Soon we will be transferring them to bigger plastic containers and then into our garden bed.  I have great luck growing plants this way.  When we go outside, the kids love playing in with all the gardening tools, soil, mud tub and bubbles.  Often they pretend to garden.  Today the played with large bubble wands and loved it.  I have been looking for an area in the complex or land owned by the city that is close by so we can ask about growing a community garden.  I'll keep you all posted.

We have plans to fix the play area up.  The plan is to put some kind of matting to level the ground.  I want to get a small play structure and sand box.  This means we'll move the garden beds to a sunny area and make space for new stuff.  I am also looking into a mini-rock climbing wall to attach on the side of the building.  More details to come.

We have our summer camp schedule.  It will begin the third week of June.  All the info. will be posted to the website this weekend.  Also, we are hosting our first Parent Night Out on May 7th from 4-10pm.  Children 2-8 are welcome.  We will be dividing the space based on ages.  The cost is $28 for four hours.  Let us know if you would like to sign up. 

Want to find our more about what your child is learning....ask them if they learned about a ladybug, dragonfly, bee, or ant.  The letter N, how does it look, what sound does it make, which words begin with N.