Wheat Grass Con't...

Here is an extension activity to our wheat grass.
I wanted Yules to document her learning by drawing a picture of what we did.
We started by observing the wheat grass and talking about what it looked like. I asked Yules what was the first thing we added and what it looked like. She decided that she wanted to use a black crayon to draw the soil. I drew the cup and she added the soil.

Next we talked about the seeds and how they looked like tiny little circles and sat right on top of the soil. I suggested maybe using orange or brown or yellow to draw the seeds. She chose brown.

 

Then I asked her what grew out of the seeds and how did it look. She said the grass was tall and green and I pointed out that it was very straight.

 

Lastly, we talked about how we took care of the grass and helped them grow by watering it everyday. So she added water to her drawing.

 Super easy and a great follow up to our activity!

Spring Sprouts

It's been feeling like Spring around here... well that is until we got a massive dump of snow! Anyways, Yules and I have been in the Springy spirit and decided to grow some wheatgrass to celebrate the first day of Spring! It's been 5 years since I've last grown any and I wasn't even sure if my 5 year old seeds would even sprout. I also forgot what to do and was too lazy to look it up. So if you are planning to do this with your little monsters... Do it!... just don't do it the way I did and you will get better results!

Growing wheatgrass is super duper easy (even when you are doing it wrong) and it only takes a week. The nice thing is there are noticeable changes every single day and that keeps the little ones interested! I used red wheat-berries, which you can buy in the health food aisle at your grocery store.

Fill some vessels with potting soil... we used an old plate and some old applesauce containers. You can be as fancy or ghetto as you'd like to be! But you don't need anything really deep.

Next you will need to wash the seeds. Ideally you should soak the seeds in water for a day until they sprout... but I forgot! Oopsies!

Then you just spread a THIN layer on top of the soil. We were over excited and spread way too many and had a super thick layer! Oopsies again!

Then after that all you have to do is keep the seeds moist! Every time Yules and I walked by we just gave them a quick mist!

 

 

This is what the seeds look liked when they sprouted after one day. (This is what they should look like if you soaked them properly before you put them on top off the soil)

 

This is what they looked like after 2 and a half days.

 

And this is after 6 days.

If you plan on eating the grass or making wheat grass shots or throwing them in a smoothie, day 7 is ideal to harvest the grass before it starts to split. After that it apparently starts to taste bitter. No wheatgrass shots in this house, just decorative uses! When it starts to get long then Yules can put her scissor skills to use and give it a trim! Not too shabby for doing it wrong... we will definitely try this again!







Update!

My computer is slowwwwwwww, super slow! That is my excuse for not blogging! I complained to Husband and suggested that maybe it was the router or RAM or operating system or whatever other computer words I knew! Haha! So he finally took a look and did some updates and it is a tad faster! Meanwhile I have accumulated a bunch of pics in my phone of things that Yules has been doing that I wanted to share with you! But there are sooooo many that I feel overwhelmed and super lazy to share them all! So here are a few of the things that we have been up to!

Yules has been making lots of "strawberry soup" lately. Except her strawberry soup doesn't actually contain any strawberries at all. This version is using dead flowers that were on their way to the garbage. She had lots of fun plucking the petals and mixing it into her strawberry soup.

This strawberry soup has bugs and gems and rocks! Yum yum!

We attempted to make some putty recipe we saw online using corn starch and dish soap. Except, I obviously didn't read all the directions and missed the part about not using Dawn dish soap in particular because it doesn't turn out as well... guess what type of dish soap we used? Hmmmm...

Yules is also super interested in using scissors, so I encourage it and let her explore freely. This might come back and bite me in the butt when she chops part of her hair off in her so-called explorations. Haha! My only tip for scissor use with toddlers is encourage them to point their thumbs up. For some reason there is a high tendency to turn their wrists.

 

Noodle soup with meat!

 Dinosaur bubble bath!

We've read "If you give a moose a muffin..." what seems like a billion times... and Yules wanted to make sock puppets like the moose did... so we did! Meet Bob and Betty!

Since it seems like I am so not on top of these seasonal holiday activities, Yules and I did an egg dying activity right after Valentines day! Booyah look who's on top of things now!! Haha! We stuck stickers on eggs and colored some with crayon and dyed them in a bath of koolaid! Nothing fancy but it was fun!

 

 

Once in a while I'll whip out a piece of Costco paper and it will entertain the monster for a good while!

 I got some free coffee filters so we made butterflies. Yules quite liked this activity because she could draw whatever she wanted and then got to spray water all over and observe what happened. Then as an added bonus I showed her how it magically transformed into a butterfly when I added the clip.

 

We did some shaving foam painting... which led to finger painting... which led to some fun explorations... which led to body art... which led to fun times cleaning up!

Sensory bin with beans!

Added some animals the next day!

Which led to bucket singing and dancing!

For St. Patrick's day we had some green beer... haha just kidding... totally kidding don't call social services on me! We made a contact paper rainbow! Took a few days but we got er done before St. Patrick's day!

Yules has been exploring lines... straight lines, squiggly lines, zig-zags, curvy lines! Well this is what I choose to call her scribbles at least... sounds fancier haha!

Yules has been wanting pizza! Except she doesn't eat pizza! What kid doesn't like to eat pizza? So strange! So anyways, we made play dough pizza instead!

That's the pizza in the "oven"!

So that's what we've been up to around here! What have you been doing with your monsters?