Gardening for homeschool science: Beans, peppers, and peas

Green beans on January 4th

Green beans on January 15th

Pepper plants on January 15th

Sunday Stories

Ha, ha.  Only one day late this time.

Jackson loves Yahtzee.  I mean LOVES it.  So much so that he would ask Mike or me to play with him as many times as possible throughout the day.  A few weeks ago we couldn't take it anymore and Mike instituted a 3-games-a-day rule.  That has somehow blossomed into 4 games.  But this is a more manageable number no matter what.  When we have finished the 3 or 4 games, we simply remind Jackson that we are finished for the day.

Well, that is not enough for the young Yahtzee king.  He has decided to start playing against himself.  He labels the score cards with "Jackson #1" and "Jackson #2" and goes on to roll those dice with gusto.  And don't forget that he must announce his scores to us at the end of each game.  Thank heaven he can do all the addition on the score cards or Mike and I would still be in for some kind of involvement in the playing of extra Yahtzee!


Max and Daddy were playing Legos.  Daddy found some missing piece for Max.  Max proceeded to pat Mike on the head and stated, "You're a good dad,  Daddy," which was said in that patronizing way we sometimes talk to our children.

Thomas' first beach day

We have been beyond blessed to have Mike home with us since Thomas' birth.  We decided to make a family trip to the beach while he was home, so that I had his help and we could let the big boys do something fun with both of us.  

We made a morning of it, starting with breakfast at this great place called Cinnamon's.  I had red velvet pancakes with a white chocolate sauce.  Mmmm.  Jackson and Max split some banana pancakes, which were awesome, with big chunks of bananas in there.  I could go back and eat breakfast right now.  Mind you, I am typing this post at 2130, lol.  

Mike and the boys took some balls to play with in the water.  The beach was not crowded, but the water was cooler than in the summer time.  I did not go in.  Thomas and I sat back in our beach tent and just enjoyed the weather and the day and watching all the big boys play.

Comfy in the beach chair.  Look at all the lovely light teal blue water!

Jackson and Max kept riding the waves in, which provided quite a good time, until Max got toppled over by one and swallowed some salt water.  He was pretty upset for all of a minute, lol. 

Playing in the sand

 Sweet sleeping baby.  This is how he spent much of his morning:)

Look at that view

Chillin' in Mom's beach chair while we tried to pick up all our stuff 

Another great view...  a baby and a beautiful beach.  Not the greatest quality because I took this picture on my phone in order to message it to some friends and family.  

Gardening science: Tomatoes

I forgot to mention that for the purpose of school, we made a nature journal.  We first started with putting pictures or journal entries of random things we experienced in nature in there.  We will still do that if it suits our fancy.  But we also added a chart for the garden.  We had started this on a posterboard, but it was just too big and we could not find a place that made sense to hang it up.  Plus, we kept adding too many things to this whole garden plot experience.  I made many of the initial entries, copied from the posterboard, but now, Jackson is making entries as well, which are basically simple observations about what is growing or changing with the plants in our garden box.

Tomatoes, January 4th, 2014.  We bought these ones from the garden store and planted them on December 26th.  A Whopper plant and a Better Bush plant.  

Tomatoes.  We had to cage them, yay!!  January 15th.  You can't see it very well, but the plant on the left actually has a green tomato on it.  

This is a tomato that we started from seed on December 15th.  We transplanted into this container on December 26th.  This picture was from January 4th.

On December 26th we replanted the egg carton with all tomatoes.  As of January 4th, we had 4 sprouts.

As of January 7th, we had 9 sprouts and one of the sprouts would end up having 4 plants in it.  Oops!  Max must have been helping with the planting, lol. 

Gardening science: red leaf lettuce, swiss chard, arugula

January 4th, 2014.  I cut both the red leaf lettuce and the arugula down and had my first salad the day after this picture.  

January 7th.  This is how much the red leaf lettuce has already grown back since January 5th!!  Cool right?

The arugula is not as fast growing back as the red leaf lettuce.

January 15th.  Ready for another salad!

I cut the swiss chard so we could try it grilled on January 10th and it's small leaves have already grown big and new ones have started to grow again.

Gardening for homeschool science: Yellow squash and green zucchini

You might have seen my post about our gardening science ongoing project.  Mike built me a garden box and then we started experimenting with seeds.  We also went to the garden store and got some plants that were already started.  I am really just blogging about this now for my own records, lol.  I want to see the plants as they grow and I can just keep coming back and adding more pictures in.

Yellow squash plants, as of January 4th, 2013.  They were planted from seed on December 15th.

You can see the other plants here too, but these are the yellow squash on January 7th, 2013.  The plant that looks similar and is a little to the left of the squashes is a green zucchini plant.  

January 15th.  They got huge!!

This one is the zucchini.  The yellow squashes are moving into all the other plants' territory.  Not sure what we should do!!

Baby Thomas, Week 2 in Pictures:)

Gotta love naps with Dad.

Chillin' with the new Batman blanket Aunt Cara and Ms. Sally made for him.  There is a Superman one too.  Super snuggly!!

Gotta love naps with Mom.

These are the "shrinking animal" pictures...  We will see how he changes/grows in relation to them over the weeks/months.  

This Batman blanket sure is warm and cozy:)  Thanks Aunt Cara and Ms. Sally!!