Flowers

We spent near enough all day yesterday in the garden, making the most of the lovely warm weather. The children enjoyed running, hopping, jumping and trying to skip up and down the garden as well as playing on the slide and the swings. Then time spent building sandcastles, playing with the dolls and play food. They were also fascinated with the different size daffodils we had, we talked about the different parts of the flower and they could see lots of pollen. I found a good picture showing some of the flower parts

and a more detailed drawing for M.

Seeing their interest yesterday, I thought we would pop into the florist after toddlers to get some white carnations to dye, some tulips and find another flower with obvious stamen that we could take apart and they could see all the parts and compare them. We were so lucky when I asked if they had some carnations and tulips, explaining what they needed them for, she came back with those and a large bunch of flowers, apparently they were all going over so couldn't be used in any of their bouquets etc but we were welcome to them.

So our first experiment was to show how water travels up the plant stem to the petals. I filled a small glass with water and added a lot of blue food colouring and then waited.

After half an hour you could already see that the dyed water had travelled up the stem to the petals.

An hour later the flowers were dyed a lovely blue, even if I do say it myself

 

and a few hours later even darker blue. 

 We also looked at the tulips and took one apart, looking at the petals, stamen, carpel and pollen. They lined up the petals and stamen and counted them.

 They then enjoyed making patterns and people with the petals etc, this led to much make believe and story telling.

Season Sensory Bottles

Our sensory bottles are looking a little worn now and had been thinking about doing some weather ones, after some thought decided to do four bottles each one representing a season instead of weather.

Spring is water, a little green food colouring and foam and sequin lead and flower shapes.

Summer is lots of small blue beads, water and glycerine, a little blue food colouring and a yellow sparkly pom pom for the sun.

Autumn is water and glycerine, autumn sequin leaves and a little brown food colouring.

Winter is lots of silver glitter, some sequin snowflakes and white pom poms for snow balls in a mixture of water and glycerine.

Allotment and Garden

We love to spend time in the garden, the children enjoying growing and planting out their own plants and of course a trip to the allotment. This time of year it's lovely as there are lots of raspberries, loganberries and strawberries to pick.

Just a few of the strawberries we have had and there are plenty more ripening.

Mind you we do have a rather large patch of strawberries, this picture is just under half our patch.

Along with our strawberries, we have loganberries, gooseberries, jostaberries, redcurrants and some blueberry bushes. Unfortunately the pigeons seem to have eaten all the gooseberries this year.

                            

I came across this bug, which I'm pretty sure is a ladybird larvae.

At home we have 3 grape vines, the children will have a real treat later in the year when they are ripened and they can pop out and pick their own bunch of grapes.

Our chickens love to try and escape their run and eat the plums, it's happened more than once but luckily the tree is getting bigger each year so it is harder for them to get at the fruit.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of one of our neighbouring allotments, they've given it up and it is a vacant plot that has gone to seed but the poppies, corn flowers and love in the mist looked so lovely I had to take a couple of photos.

I am happy to finally see some more flowers finally appearing in the garden, the children love to smell the mint and lavender, as well as watching all the insects they attract.

Leaf and Flower Pictures

We have been discovering how much fun can be had with just a spray bottle of water and leaves, flowers, twigs etc that they found in the garden. Unfortunately limited flowers at the moment as my rabbit loves to eat them, I think he thinks I've planted them especially for him! We've made pictures before from natural materials and they love doing this but they were a bit dubious when I then explained we would wet their designs and see what pattern was left behind! Anyway after a quick demonstration from me away they went, these are some of their pictures, they created.

To start with we collected up lots of leaves, flowers, twigs etc They then created patterns/pictures and with the water bottle on mist, they gently, or sometimes not so gently, sprayed their picture with water.