How Does Your Garden Grow?

Week two of my MOMS Camp has begun! My theme for this week is "How Does Your Garden Grow?" I plan to plant some flowers, tour some gardens, and visit the local Farmers Market this week. We'll also do special crafts, watch special movies, and read special books having to do with gardens, flowers, and vegetables.

The first morning, which was Memorial Day, we picked out flowers from Home Depot. Molly chose petunias with purple and white on them, and I got orange marigolds for Ben, which he promptly grabbed and "de-petaled" in the cart! While Molly helped me push the cart through the aisles, I announced we were turning "left" or "right" to help Molly learn her directions. As we looked through all the plants, Molly was very interested in smelling the roses and finding certain colors of flowers. We talked about buds on a plant which were about to open, and the difference between plants that need all sunlight versus those that need shade (like our yard, which is filled with trees!).

During Ben's nap, the two of us went out front to plant some flowers. We didn't get many in the ground, but what we did was fun and I'm glad that one little corner of our front yard is a bit brighter. Most of the work was done by me, but Molly was excited to put the flowers in the holes, pat the dirt down around them, and of course to water them. She also was interested to find worms and lots of insects, as always.

The movie I really want to watch this week is Gnomeo & Juliet. We haven't seen it yet and it just came out at Red Box, but it's already checked out everywhere. I attempted to reserve it online, but there was an error and when we got to the one McDonald's in our area with it, someone else had already gotten to it. I'll keep searching for it though! Meanwhile, Molly chose Megamind so we just watched that instead.

Today we headed to the library to check out a bunch of new books I'd ordered about gardens. Today we read Dinosaur Garden by Liza Donnelly, Oswald's Garden by Heather Feldman, and Watch Me Grow! Blue Plants a Seed by Lauryn Silverhardt. The one with Blues Clues was really cute and pretty educational. I loved the lesson it taught that it takes time for a seed to grow so that Molly won't be hoping for instant growth on anything we plant this week!

At preschool earlier this month, Molly had planted some bean seeds which she brought home. Until now they've stayed in their little cup on my kitchen windowsill, but they were getting way too long to stay there! Our yard is complete shade and we really can't grow vegetables of any kind, so we opted to plant her bean plants in my mom's garden. Any trip to her grandma's house is a fun outing for Molly!

I have some pictures of us shopping for flowers and then planting them, but will have to post them later since I'm not at home tonight. The weather has been so nice this week, I'm glad we've been able to be outside. I hope it stays this way!