Garden Week: getting down and dirty

It's officially Garden Week in Little Mama's house!

We wasted no time getting our hands dirty this morning to kick off Garden Week.  There's nothing like a little faux mud to get the party started.  Coffee grinds make for a great "dirt" sensory table experience, especially when it's raining outside and the real deal isn't going to happen.  It's gritty, dirty, and smells like coffee, yum.  Little Mama dug right in, although we had to wash her hands a few times before she got comfortable with the texture.   I repeatedly explained she didn't have to play with it if she didn't want to, but she kept going back for more.            

Coffee grinds for a sensory table

Next, we made a garden--a paper garden.  I'm always looking for a new canvas to create our artwork.  Today it was the refrigerator.  We taped up pictures of flowers, bees, and other bugs to create our own garden on the fridge.  Our flower magnets worked well too and got added to the mix.  

It looks like a jumbled mess--not quite your typical garden, but at least we had fun in the process.  

We also had lots of fun with seeds today...

Little Mama loved exploring the inside of a bell pepper.  Wow, look at all the seeds!  It's amazing how something so simple can be so fun.  Once we started with the pepper, she wanted to see more seeds.  Sure, why not?  Good thing we had apples and sunflower seeds readily available.      

We read lots of great stories about seeds to provide context for our food and seed experiment.  The Carrot Seed is really cute and simple.  No one believes this little boy's seed will grow, but one day it sprouts into a huge carrot.  Little Mama's face lit up when she saw it.  Too cute.    

While at Rite-Aid, Hubby picked up a few window kits to grow plants indoors.  He bought a sunflower, cactus, and cosmos kit.  They were about two bucks each.  I've never done one of these before but the labels assert that the seeds are guaranteed to grow.  Hmm, we'll see.     

Little Mama and I assembled our kits.  We added water to these small tablets of soil, planted our seeds and set them on the window sill to grow.

More updates to follow on our window sill project...

Banana, peanut butter, honey & raisin butterfly (or moth)

At lunch, I presented Little Mama with a banana, peanut butter, honey & raisin butterfly.  She quickly countered that it was a moth, not a butterfly.  Um, sure.  Hopefully it's a tasty one.

Our Shapes Flower

This week's first piece of art  -- our Shapes Flower -- went up on Little Mama's easel.  Nice work, Little Mama.  I can't wait to see what the rest of the week has in store.