Greenhouses!!

Yes, Yes, I know, I know . . . . It has been a very long time since I last updated the blog.  I apologize.  We were blessed to have Joey home for several days.  Unfortunately, his vacation time coincided with my being sick.  Then, it was the children's turn.  Needless to say, we've all been sick for the past couple of weeks.  Except of course for Joey who never seems to get any of the sickness that makes the rounds at the Seiber house.  Still, God is good and we are all well again and back to school.

September is an exciting month for school around here.  It is Dr. Seuss month which means we get to read some of our favorite books every day during our literature / story time.  It also means we are working each day toward our goal of reading 150 books during this month.  Plus, we have started studying plants for science which has been a lot of fun.

We began the school year with a study of insects which lends itself very well to a study of plants.  We studied the life cycles of butterflies, ladybugs, and ants and now we get to study the life cycles of different types of plants.  We studied honeybees and how they help flowers and plants.  Now we can study the flowers themselves.  I enjoy anything I can add to the curriculum to help the children see God's wonderful creation and how He made everything to work together in harmony.  When we study plants, we get to talk about God's plan for plants as found in the first chapter of Genesis, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."  This is a great opportunity to show the children that God has a plan for plants, they are to yield fruit after their kind and yield seeds to make more plants.  God has a plan for each of them too.  I love how science and Bible work together in the classroom and out of the classroom to point us to God and his plan for our lives.

Okay, I'm finished preaching (for now).  Since I missed several Fridays lately, I wanted to make up for them by posting a few blogs about some more of my favorite things.  We have some fun materials to help us study plants, but our favorite so far has been the Watch-it-Grow Window Greenhouses from Lakeshore Learning.  They hang in the window with suction cups and we have planted pea plants in them.  The children have been waking up each morning and checking on their plants.  It has been exciting to see how it grows.

There is a place to write each child's name so they can watch 'their' plants grow.  Our classroom window is covered with 6 of these fun greenhouses (1 for each of the kids and 1 for Mommy).  Lakeshore sells them in classroom sets of 20 or you can buy them individually for only 2.95 each.