Gardening Home School Style

So today begins our adventure into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Although most historians believe that they were probably terraced and not actually hanging we'll be doing hanging gardens. This is part of our summer schooling program. We'll be able to get a lot of things in with this one project: reading, math, science, social studies (or History), writing, home economics, art and probably some other things if I think about it a bit more. I love being able to put everything together, it's more realistic. After all when you want to know information about something it usually isn't separate from other things. We don't research about gardens just because, usually it's to benefit our lives in some way (help provide food for our tables, cut costs, etc). So we used some of the money we got from our tax return to get both the girls their own hanging garden. Each will be hanging their own choice of two tomato plants and two cucumbers. Then the tops will be up to them. I'm doing my own garden in the back using the square foot gardening method that my sister-in-law introduced me to. I was lucky enough to see the one she had in Virgina and was fascinated by it. Now I'm actually going to be able to try one myself this year finally. Okay so I know that I'm trying to share the thrifty side of things that we do. We did save some money on the gardens by getting them at our local Sams for $50.00. We are also saving the recipts since our accountant said that we can claim many things on our taxes for education costs. I'm not sure what all we can claim but I'm keeping all the receipts of everything we spend on the girls schooling with a short note on the back of what it was used for. We'll see how much we get back when we file next year. This year we were able to claim a little over $600 on hubby's college expenses. Hopefully later today I'll be able to figure out how to post pictures on here for everyone to see!

Until then.........

Spring is in the air?

With the first day of Spring being the 20th of March this year we're looking forward to the warmer weather. Although it looks as if mother nature is making sure to get the cold weather in one way or another this year. We have a week of nice warmer weather only to have it turn cool again. We are getting ready to start our seeds since they are saying this will be our last cold spell. I decided this year to spend the money to purchase two Hanging Gardens from Sams this year. They don't have them on their website and I'm still looking for a link for them. I will add the link if I ever find one. If I can get the camera charged I will put a picture of them on here for everyone. They are nice since we will be able to put up to six plants hanging and then smaller plants on top. We'll be hanging tomatoes and cucumbers and we're not real sure what we'll be putting on top just yet. I decided this would be a good science project to add to the curriculum also. We'll be doing a simple journal made out of plain white paper folded in half with a piece of construction paper on the outside. The children can decorate the outside cover as they like, hopefully with some encouragement it will be themed towards a garden. Might have a princess added too since they are girls. Then we will be able to draw pictures and do our copy work on each page as the different stages of plants grow. I'm also considering doing a lapbook. A member of our homeschooling group was kind enough to show us these at our last meeting. I really like the idea of them. You can do a search for them and find lots of information on them. This may be better for our oldest child, I'm not sure if our youngest would have the patience for this. I may consider doing it as a group activity too. Since the youngest would like the cutting and pasting, the oldest the reading and finding of facts, and I could help with the writing since some of the areas to write in are small. One thing I find hard is there are so many really good ideas out there that I want to try them all sometimes. We've tried some things and although they are good ideas they just don't work for us so we put them aside and move on. We've also found that some things work for one of our girls but just isn't right for the other. I'm learning that sometimes pushing through just isn't a good idea. Learning is taking on a new meaning in this house, and we're loving it!