Kiddo Summer Series Week No. 1: Planting Our Garden

This summer, I’ve tried to be all about the kids.  Well, in between going to L.A. with Hubby for a “celebrity” wedding and gallivanting off to NYC with my girls for BlogHer – you know, I’ve got my priorities all in order.

So I decided to create a fun lesson plan for the summer weeks to make sure that we are doing creative, educational things instead of letting the days waste away as the kids (happily) watch every single episode of SpongeBob ever made 1,100 times.  Each week has a theme, and the activities include one hands-on activity, one field-trip and one kinda-sorta educational component.

Week No. 1′s theme was: “Planting Our Garden.”

First, we spent an afternoon painting our flower pots.

Then we took a field trip to the plant nursery to choose our flowers.  {We were supposed to go for a “Flower Walk” around the neighborhood, but being ever the overachiever, Mom decided to kill two birds with one stone and do the Flower Walk at the nursery! Brilliant!} We spent a lot amount of time walking up and down the rows, looking at all the different kinds of flowers and what they were called.  We even saw tons of butterflies!

Don’t worry, Dad – L’il Buddy was just along for the ride. He realizes flowers aren’t at all masculine.

After the girls identified their bloom of choice, we brought them home and planted them in our pots and talked about how to care for our plants, what makes them grow and all that jazz {see? very educational}.

Masterpieces!

The girls have been really great about watering their flowers.  Maybe there’s hope for them yet.  The best part of the week for me was the painting. It kept the girls busy for over an hour. We sat in the sun, chatting and painting – good times.  Thanks to Teach Mama for giving me the idea. I really should have had the girls paint the pots white first like Teach Mama did, but whatevs!