One Hook Wonder

Wordless Wednesday Walk In The Woods

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What We're Eating

Oh yeah...

 

Right now these babies are in the fridge waiting to be eaten with homemade shortcakes tomorrow night.  Have you ever eaten strawberries still warm from the sun?  If not, you're missing out!

The garden is looking really good -  we're enjoying yummy salads nightly and eagerly awaiting the first peas:

 

The green beans have all popped up and are doing well:

 

As are the potatoes:

 

And it even looks like we might have a nice crop of onions (finally!!) this year:

 

Boba shoveled another truckload of gravel into the garden this weekend; we're estimating we have about 3 more to go now.  I can't wait till it's all done.  The Mister and I were busy all weekend on a few projects I'll share later this week. 

Any tomato tips?  Mine aren't looking so hot.  I seem to always have trouble with tomatoes.  I brought home some cow manure this weekend to spread around them in hopes of helping.  I was looking forward to making lots of sauce this summer, but currently I'm worried none of them will make it long enough to produce!

Recent Hits

We are still rockin' the Montessori every afternoon here.  Recent hits include....

Scooping floating stars out of water (pretty much anything involving water is a fave):

 

Using a garlic press to squeeze water out of sponges:

 

Sorting pasta by shape or color:

 

Short Pants LOVES this pasta.  We've done several different sorting lessons with it all by his request.  I'm pretty in love with it too; the colors are so vibrant and pretty.  I tried to dye my own, but as it was a disaster, I ended up ordering some from DooDad Smith:

  

His favorite are the "magic beans," which he loves to find while I tell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk:

 

Pin punching also turned out to be a huge hit.  I was suprised that he had the patience to do it long enough to punch out the shape in the end, but he did:

 

 

He also enjoyed matching keys to locks, even though it was a bit difficult for him at first:

 

And as always, anything involving letters is a hit.  I snagged some of his Schleich animals, then drew "caves" for them.  Short Pants' job was to match the beginning sound  of the animal to the correct cave:

 

If you have any ideas for fun letter/letter sounds activities and games, I would love to hear them!

Mother's Day Part Two

So after using my family as garden and yard slaves for most of the weekend, I decided that we all deserved a bit of a rest.  We headed over to a nearby monestery for a walk.  That place makes monk-dom look pretty good, what with the nature and the quiet and all. 

Before we left I forced asked nicely that everyone pose for a few pictures in the yard.  I'm so lucky that all of these lovely people belong to me:

 

 

And then it was on to our walk:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mother's Day Part One

I really, really love my husband for this one.  He made certain that the entire Mother's Day weekend was spent doing what I wanted to do.  That meant a lot of gardening...yay!  I was able to get the rest of our veggies planted, and we now have about half of the garden re-rocked as well.  I'm so thrilled and love my garden sooooo much; it makes me smile every time I look out at it.  Here's a long shot of it:

 

I decided to expand it a bit this year, so we've got 4 big squares of potatoes, 2.5 squares of green beans, 1.5 squares of peas, .5 squares of lettuce, 1 square of pumpkins, 1 square of zucchini, 1 square of crookneck squash, 7 tomato plants, 2 basil plants, 2 rows of strawberries, and 4 short rows of corn. 

Here's the as-yet-unmulched-tomatoes and the new corn patch:

And yeah, the weeds you see in the path would be the reason for all of the re-rocking this year!

Short Pants also has  his very own patio tomato plant.  He's very proud of it and checks on it daily:

  

I'm happy to report that the shade garden is really popping up and taking off.  I was able to rock it in a bit better this weekend since the plants have grown so much larger.  Of course, I took the pictures before I did so:

 

We also put some rock in another shady area.  Bean and I are going to be installing a fairy garden here soon.  A wee swimming pool and a gnome cave will be definate requirements:

 

Did you see the silly clematis growing up high in the tree?

Scenes From The Yard

Ack!  I've fallen a few posts behind, so I'm going to go ahead and show you what we did in the yard this last week before going on to Mother's Day (I hope yours was as fab as mine!).  In between raindrops we spent many evenings outside last week trying to get the yard and garden under control.  The Mister is working on making a splitting maul, and the big kids were only too happy to help out:

 

 

Boba's manly lumberjack pose:

 

Our new little sitting area on the front porch...the cats love it:

 

Me gardening, in all of my sweaty glory:

 

Why why WHY won't you let me eat rocks?!:

 

I hope you've been enjoying the outdoors as much as we've been lately:

 

 

 

 

Umm

Huh.  It appears that I've run out of clever blog titles.  So sorry - after 2 years it was bound to happen, no?

As it's been raining most days and no gardening is going on, and as the only crafting that's been going on is hemming a pair of pants for The Mister (I know, I know, hemming is decidely not crafting) I thought I'd share some more of Short Pants recent lessons with you.  We took the plunge and invested in some basic Montessori materials.  They were expensive, but still less so than even one year of preschool, and of course we'll use them with Pita Pocket too. 

Short Pants was very excited to try out the first cylinder block:

 

Surprisingly, the continent map was a HUGE hit.  I didn't have plans to introduce this till later, but Short Pants spied it and has wanted to do it over and over.  This week we'll be learning the continent song and hopefully finding a globe to work with.   He's picked Antartica as the first continent he wants to learn more about, so I'm working on putting together lessons for that:

 

Fabric matching has been a lot of fun as well.  I just took several types fabrics from my stash and cut them into uneven perfectly straight squares with a pair of pinking shears.  As Short Pants isn't a fan of the blindfold, I have him close his eyes and try to match them.  I also have him feel one behind his back and then try to pick out the match from the rug.  He loves to have me do this lesson as well:

 

The other week I did a sandpaper letter rubbing lesson with him that he didn't seem to care for very much.  Then last week he asked me to set it out again, so I did.  I suppose this is why Montessori stresses following the child so much, because he sat down and methodically did a rubbing for each of his letter sounds.  I'd say he worked on it for over 30 minutes, and loved every second of it:

 

 

He was so pleased to have all of his rubbings hung on our "art window" (in truth part of a slider that needs replaced badly - care to donate the $4000 it takes to replace 2 sets of 8-foot sliders??):

 

If anyone is interested in a list of materials that we purchased, let me know and I'll post it.  It was quite an investment, and one that we didn't take lightly (and of course we're making what we can!) but both The Mister and I feel that Montessori is turning out to be a wonderful fit for our family.  I have no desire to send Short Pants off to preschool (and almost all of the "preschools" close to here are NOT preschools but really daycare centers) at the moment and he gets all the socialization he needs from our playgroup and get-togethers with friends.  I love that I've found a way to expose him to a rich education here at home!