Co-op Happenings: Spring Surprises

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Today, in a our co-op, we began the newly released Download N Go, Spring Surprises from Amanda Bennett. Before I tell you about our day, I want to tell you how wonderful these unit studies are (in case you’ve missed my past raves!). A perfect combination of unit study, notebooking, and lapbooking, geared to your K-grade 4 aged children, they are beautiful, easy to use, and can be completed in a week. Since we only meet once a week with our co-op families, we’ll combine some things and complete it in 3 weeks, with the notebooking and lapbooking finished at home.

Now on to our day! We began by reminding the children what brings about changes in seasons (the tilt of the earth on its axis) and discussed signs of spring. The kids are so excited about spring, so the answers to what signs of spring have you seen were enthusiastic. BIRDS! FLOWERS! SUN! GREEN GRASS!

(Ben took this picture on our deck yesterday)

(my hyacinths started blooming this week!)

We read a couple of books and looked through several of the clickable links inside Spring Surprises.

What Happens in Spring? (I Like the Seasons!)

Sunshine Makes the Seasons (reillustrated) (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)

Next up we learned about seeds, plants, and gardens. There were several more links inside this DNG book that showed things like an oak tree changing through the seasons, the growth of a radish seed in 15 seconds, and another time lapse video of a bean seed sprouting. We also read this lovely book…

Backyard Sunflower

Once we finished our time with books and websites, we took the children outdoors to get their hands dirty, planting seeds to get some little seedlings started for our garden! We purchased these “greenhouses” which have room to plant 72 seeds…

This is what the little peat pellets look like, before watering them…

Once water is added, they expand very quickly. Once they have expanded, we had to peel back the netting around each one…

Then is was time to plant seeds. And plant we did! We planted 15 different types of seeds: marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers, peppers, carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, green beans, lima beans, basil, oregano, dill, parsley, cilantro, and chives.

We thought these marigold seeds were very cool. A lot of the seeds looked very similar, but these were so different!

We drew the attention of many of the neighborhood children and they all helped with the watering and planting. Now they’re all looking forward to watching the little seedlings sprout. Hopefully, we’ll be able to keep up with a chart of their growth and comparing the different plants to each other. We’ll certainly document the growth in photos at the very least. Hopefully in a couple of months, we’ll see the fruits of our labor!

Free Nature Study Journal

Encourage your children to keep a nature journal with this free nature study printable for all four seasons. Includes scavenger hunts, draw and write pages, backyard bird count, and more! To receive your copy, enter your email below.

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Free Nature Study Journal