weekly wrap-up, week 35, spring #11

Ok, ok, here's a post already! Sheesh, it's not like I was laying around eating bon-bons, I was busy!!

Anyway, we got back into the swing of things after our 2 weeks of vacation, and attacked our second to last week of our Spring Kindergarten semester. I started off the week by dumping the kids with my Mom (tee hee!) and sneaking off to the amazing Laurel Sanctuary in Union, CT, with my Dad. The Mountain Laurel were in glorious bloom, and a dramatic fog added to the mystique of this really cool place, which is a family favorite destination this time of year. Dad and I then headed down to the famous Variegated Foliage Nursery in Eastford, CT, where we both spent mucho dinero on various variegated plants to add to our various gardens.

Plants and flowers continued to be a dominant theme in our homeschooling week as well. Our seedlings (planted during week 33) are really getting big, so transplanting them will be a priority during the coming week. Excited about all the new plants I brought home on Monday, Zoo Boy insisted that I take him and J to a couple of local nurseries during the week, where they (and I!) selected several more nice specimens to add to our gardens, and they bought more seeds for us to start now that the last batch of seedlings will be moving outdoors. Zoo Boy selected Forget-me-nots again (I guess they are his favorite flower) and Zinnias, while J selected Morning Glories (apparently his favorite) and Moon Flowers. I picked up a package of pumpkin seeds to toss into the manure pile and see what comes of them.

We continued our Planting Flowers Adventure Circle this week, but by the end of the week we moved on to a more organic circle, which is what we are going to use for the summer. The way it works is that we go for a morning walk (rather than having an adventure circle) and do the Enki Movement activities as they naturally come up. For instance, on Friday we saw this lovely Black Swallowtail butterfly on our morning walk, so we did "Waken, Sleeping Butterfly", then walked on. When we passed a flower garden, we naturally burst into "Lavender's Blue, Dilly Dilly". When we came across some little seedlings just starting to grow, we launched into "The Little Plant". When we stumbled onto a puddle leftover from the previous night's rain, we did "Rain". And so on. On a 45 minute walk, we found at least 10 movement activities to do.

On Thursday we hooked up with some friends over at our favorite park. Here J and his buddy Little J check out the butterfly garden.

Our curriculum story for the week was "Milk and Eggs", a folk tale from the Enki Kindergarten collection. It's a very silly story about the mishaps of a man who was sent to market to buy milk and eggs for his wife, but refused to take any means of carrying the milk and eggs home. He eventually decides to pour the milk into his hat, then turns the hat upside down in order to carry the eggs. When he gets home, he shows his hat full of eggs to his wife, who then asks where the milk was, at which time, he flips the hat over only to discover that the milk is gone, and now so are the eggs (all over the floor, that is). J thought the story was hilarious. Zoo Boy didn't get it, even after a couple of readings, so the last day I acted out the scene with a baseball cap, reading the lines of the story as I turned the hat over and inside out. Then he got it, and agreed with J that it was pretty funny.

The four friends, walking at the park on Thursday.

Our Family Story Time stories this week were Bumblebee, Bumblebee, Do You Know Me? A Garden Guessing Game, by Anne Rockwell (a fun verse and a chance for the kids to learn the names of common garden flowers -- a real favorite with Zoo Boy); It's Summer!, by Linda Glaser, illustrated by Susan Swan (I love this entire series of books, they have one for each season); and Jack's Garden, by Henry Cole (by far all of our favorite book this week, as it has a progressive repeating verse, wonderful illustrations, and is a more sophisticated means of learning the common garden plants in addition to insects and other garden-dwelling critters. The kids snag this book daily to pour over the contents).