The Uncorporated Garden 2011: This Year's Plans

In 2010, we put in three cherry tomatoes and two bell peppers in the back; carrots and Gerber daisies and marigolds and cukes out front. In the fall, I dug out the back bed, expanded it and the area around the (cut back) lilac, and turned over the beds out front. The kids thought it great fun to poke around and find worms.

This year, I have a plan set up for our six planting areas. In no particular order, meet the beds!

The Lilac Bed, with unknown spring bulb

The expanded Back Bed, with various bulbs

The Raised Bed, sometime home to neighborhood chipmunks

The North Porch Bed - not much to look at now

The West Porch Bed, with containered chives

The Planting Boxes - the long ones are specifically for the kids

A bonus bed for something tall!

I'll post later on the specifics of each bed, but overall we're hoping to produce tomatoes (cherry and Roma), bell peppers, green beans (bush and pole), carrots, radishes, okra, cucumbers, basil, cilantro, oregano, chives, thyme, and rosemary. We'll definitely salt in some marigolds here are there, and there may be some other herbs, but that has yet to be seen.

I'll also keep a running list of garden tasks, more for myself than anything. Tasks so far:

• Mark out planting locations in the back bed done
  
• Clean out leaves from all beds
• Turn over soil
• Add topsoil, sand(?), compost
• Save eggshells and coffee grounds
• Transplant mums from raised bed to west porch bed
• Buy seeds/seedlings

But first, we need to wait for things to warm up! We're still nearly two months out from our average last frost date, and we're still dropping below freezing some nights, so it's still planning at this point.

This may be our first bulb to bloom - any day now!

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We are ostensibly homeschooling our two kids (ages 2 and almost-5), although it's been rather informal so far. We are however seizing opportunities as they arise to reinforce reading, math, and other basic skills, with the hope of laying a solid foundation for when we ramp up a formal curriculum.

This garden update is part of The Homeschool Village's Garden Challenge - we will continue updating through the growing season. Photos of the garden beds were taken March 30, 2011. Check back to see our progress!

Previewing the Uncorporated Garden 2011

I will never again take for granted having a piece of land in which to grow food. Discussions of health, convenience, and food security aside, it's just plain fun to go out and dig in the dirt. And if I'm going to dig in the dirt (sorry - the soil), I might as well get something productive out of it beyond just pretty flowers.

As a family, we have lived in four places over the last six years. When my wife and I started out, we had a "garden apartment", which allowed us a small garden on the north (!) side of our unit. We got lots of shade from the surrounding buildings and the garage, but I think we managed to eke out some flowers. I remember specifically having some spectacular (for us, anyway) sunflowers that were the result of some forgotten birdseed.

Just before Isaac was born, we moved closer to my workplace at the time. We had a second-floor apartment with no garden space of our own. It did have a balcony, though, that overlooked an ecologically-poor stream (but it was so nice to have the sound of water outside). We had a couple of container gardens out on the balcony (north-facing, again!) in which we grew flowers and a family of ducks.

During our 18-month housesitting adventure, we finally had a decent plot of land (just shy of an acre), but it wasn't ours, so instead of ripping up the acre of golf-course grass and planting veggies, I got the privilege of mowing and mowing and mowing and mowing and mowing. For the record, grass is (mostly) evil. Just sayin'.

If only he was really cutting the grass!

I stuck a few spring bulbs in the flower beds, and had a container of chives, but beyond that the gardens were fairly ornamental. I suppose I could have done some significant container gardening, but my work schedule never permitted me the time to get it organized.

Here in Saline, we have garden space on both sides (south and north) of the townhouse, and even a raised bed that a previous resident constructed. It had rhubarb and ornamentals when we moved in; the back garden bed had hostas, century plants, and others. I like rhubarb, but I'm the only one, so in the larger interest of starting fresh, we cleaned out the beds and did our own thing.

Someday, I'll have enough space (and construction capital) to build an herb spiral, but that will have to wait a few years.

Herb Spiral illustration from The Saturday Evening Post

Next time: Last year's efforts and this year's plans

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We are ostensibly homeschooling our two kids (ages 2 and almost-5), although it's been rather informal so far. We are however seizing opportunities as they arise to reinforce reading, math, and other basic skills, with the hope of laying a solid foundation for when we ramp up a formal curriculum.

This garden update is part of The Homeschool Village's Garden Challenge - we will continue updating through the growing season.

I (We) Love The Zoo

One of the things that you can do when you are uncorporated (and have memberships to local places) is randomly go on educational trips with your kids. As in, we find ourselves with a couple hours to kill and we decide to drive in to the Hands On Museum. Or the zoo.

This past week, Tiffany and I both had Wednesday off, and it was sunny and above freezing, so we packed up the kids and headed down to the Toledo Zoo. That's what everybody does in early March in Michigan/NW Ohio, right?

How to Zoo in Winter: lots of blankets in the wagon!

The place was dead - I think we saw maybe twenty other patrons while we were there. It was like having the place to ourselves (although I've never really felt crowded at Toledo Zoo). The flip side is that lots of the concessions/train/carousel weren't open, but that wasn't really the point of our quick visit there.

After visiting the polar bears, seals, wolves (sleeping), giraffes (indoors), and eagles, we headed across the bridge to the main part of the zoo. From the bridge, we had the best view of the lions that we've ever had - and the lions were up and about! Isaac and I stopped to take a peek through my binoculars.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this so reminds me of my dad.

Next up is the duck and goose pond, right across from the aviary (which I never get to as often as I'd like!). The birds are much easier to see when the vegetation is down for the winter.

How freaky would this be without depth perception?

 

 

The new kids' section of the zoo opened last year, but I hadn't been yet. Nature's Neighborhood includes many activity stations, including an outdoor theater, climbing structure, a stream and beach area, and goat petting. We opted for the indoor portion, with a home-type setting, a forest, and education room. Esther particularly liked the turtle statue and the large-scale bird's egg.

 

The education room had an exhibit/activity about different types of bird beaks - macaw, heron, and pelican - and how easy or hard it was to pluck rubber worms out of the water with each. Water + kids = instant fun.

Isaac figured out quickly that the 'heron' (long tweezers) worked best

The indoor forest includes lots of interactive exhibits, with features on leafcutter ants, Really. Big. Spiders., and honeybees. What do you think Isaac went for first?

Between the house area and the forest is a secret passage - a hollow 'log' accessed through a sliding bookcase. Both the kids thought this was great fun.

At the end of the passage is a large bird enclosure with lots of psittacids (lories, cockatoos, etc.) and some other colorful, friendly birds. Esther enjoyed meeting a pair of White-crested Laughingthrushes, and they were certainly excited to meet her!

We will most certainly be back to check out the outdoor activities in Nature's Neighborhood, as well as revisit some of our other favorite places at the zoo, but I don't think we'll ever get so lucky as to have the place to ourselves again!

Too Late for Resolutions?

So, co-op went reasonably well yesterday, although Isaac was barefoot through half of his second class. Nobody seemed to mind much, so I'll just roll with it. That's one of the dangers with cowboy boots - easy (for him) to slip off. He didn't seem to be much of a behavior problem though, so that's always good. We are beyond ready for his sleep to get sorted out again - I want my well-rested, well-behaved son back!

I've got a new responsibility at co-op: running the canteen/concession stand/yearbook-fundraiser snack counter. Seems pretty simple so far - the hardest part is lugging everything upstairs for lunch on a REALLY SQUEAKY cart. I think every teacher along the back hallway stuck their head out to see who was making such a racket!

- - -

On the homefront, there are a few things I need to get nailed down. I'm not my wife and I can't juggle it all in my head. Printouts on the fridge, here we come!

Number one: we need to get a schedule. I wish Isaac and Esther could read it and follow it, but that's probably hoping too much. At the very least, I need to have it in front of me most of the day so I can, oh, start dinner sooner than 6:30 at night. And having a designated computer time about which I don't feel guilty would be great too.

Scheduling leads in to #2: meal planning. If I'm going to be the one at home all day and preparing meals, I need to have some sort of plan. I'll be happy with weekly for now; if I can actually get a whole month planned out, great! This should help out with grocery shopping and budgeting (four weeks of grocery budget spent in three this month - eep!), as well as getting meals in the kids. Tiffany's tried a couple times to tell me what the kids will eat, but I never remember it for more than a couple days, so Isaac ends up eating what he wants to tell me (usually, a tortilla and a glass of Maryland milk) and then has a meltdown later because he's hungry.

The last thing for now is getting an adult responsibility chart set up again. I tried early last fall to divvy up household chores between me and Tiffany, but it didn't take so well. I'm hoping that the combination of a new daily schedule (with designated 'chore' times) and a more realistic (read: more succinct) list of chores will prove to be a workable solution. I'll let you know how it goes.

Do you have any good tips for managing any of the three items above? How have you set up a meal plan for your household?

Do-Over!

Our homeschool co-op starts up again this morning. Isaac's classes this semester are Insects and Safety (two separate classes, not a single class on how to protect yourself from wasps). He's excited about both - I wonder how long it will be before he wants to take one of his 'weird animal' books to share.

I was going to be teaching a class on birds(!), but we didn't have anywhere for Esther to go while I taught (the nursery class is full - again - <grumble>). The solution was for someone else to take over my (mine, I tell you!) class and I'll be helping to run the canteen, while Esther tries to stay out of trouble. We'll see how that goes.

- - -

Speaking of Esther, she's in the midst of potty training herself. Yay! The biggest challenge for me is to recognize when she needs to go. Usually she starts taking her clothes off - that's my cue. She seems to think that she has to be naked to go to the bathroom. I'm sure she'll grow out of that eventually, right? In the meantime, we'll have to get her some big girl underwear pretty soon. Hopefully, she'll be ready before we run out of the current case of diapers!

They help you see in the dark, don't they?

The weather this past week in Southeast Michigan has been absolutely gorgeous. Cass Lake weather, we would call it - sunny and mid-60s/70s in the day, 40s and high 30s at night (good sleeping weather). It's this type of weather that makes me miss being in an office all day *so much* </sarcasm>

Anyway, so I took advantage of the day and did some fall clean-up around the garden beds. As I was pulling dead leaves and weeds out of the raised bed, I found some of the carrots that we planted (at Isaac's behest, though he won't eat carrots to save his life) back in the late spring. Not expecting much, I tugged at the tuft of green and found a tiny little carrot, about half as long as my pinky and not much bigger around.

Yay, a carrot! That I grew! Nobody famous once said, "Food never tastes so good as when you have raised/grown/cooked it yourself." Or they should have, at least.

Continuing with the garden cleaning, I pulled up the netting that we had placed over the sown carrot seeds to deter little munchy creatures from going all Peter Rabbit on our garden. If you ever want to harvest carrots easily, install plastic netting over them when you sow. The tops grow up through the netting, and when you pull it up, zzzzipp!, up come all the carrots at once!

But Zeb, I didn't know you could grow pre-sized baby carrots? Yours are so cute!

I will confess that I have always been apprehensive about growing things from seed - too high of a failure rate after the seedlings get to be about 2 inches tall. With that in mind, when we saw a plethora of tiny carrot sprouts, I was so overjoyed that they were growing(!) that I couldn't bear to thin them out. What if I plucked the good one and the rest of them failed?

As you can see by the photos, none of our carrots grew very large, because they were overcrowded. But we did get carrots, by George! Who knows if we'll try again next year?

Esther continues her agricultural exploration

Just to tie this to home education, Isaac worked on a file folder game later in the afternoon. And what should appear out of the bag, but a carrot counting game! Isaac breezed through it like a champ. Counting 1-5, check!

Tiffany Tuesday - The Apple Experiment

A guest post from Tiffany, who is starting a new semi-regular feature, Tiffany Tuesdays. Enjoy!

This was supposed to go up yesterday, but my shoulder left me immobilized most of the night last night.  But here you go, anyway!

Monday, when we went to the library, I told Isaac that he needed to choose 1 apple and 1 pumpkin book BEFORE he chose 2 train books.  Well, he did one better and chose 2 apple books, 1 pumpkin book, and 2 train books (including one about how they brought Abraham Lincoln's body back from Washington D.C. to Illinois for burial).  On our way home, Isaac dove into his first apple book ("My Apple").  It's a great little book with various mini-experiments for kids to do with apples. Well, he found the "does it float or sink" page and wanted to know the answer.  One thing I like about this book, is that it doesn't give the answer, forcing you to do the science experiment with him.

We dialoged a bit about apples and whether they might float or sink.  I asked Isaac what he thought would happen. He answered with, "I think the apple will sink."  I decided now was a great teachable moment and taught him a $5 word, explaining that when we make a guess about what will happen and then do an experiment to find out, our guess is called a hypothesis.  And oh, how I wish you could hear him say it.  It is unbelievably cute!  

So, we got home and raised the platform on our learning tower.  Zeb got out a bowl of water, and I raided our bag of apples left from our picking adventure last week!  

Here is our first go round at introducing Isaac to the Scientific Method...


The Question: Will apples sink or float? 
Hypothesis: The apple(s) will sink.

Experiment: 

1. Place one small apple in the bowl. 
2. Place one large apple in the bowl.
3. Place multiple apples in the bowl.
4. Let them be kids and just make a royal mess...

Conclusions: 

1. The small apple floats.
2. The large apple floats.
3. You can put 4 apples in the bowl and they still float!
4. We had to leave the tower upside down overnight to let the feet dry.

And the documentation of said Scientific Method!

 

And if that weren't enough, Isaac's class "Storybook Forest" had the theme of apples this week!  They did some fun crafts and read the book "Ten Apples Up On Top", which is a fabulous book if you've not ever read it!  One of their activities was to put 10 apples on the page (picture below).  Isaac did put exactly 10 pictures on his page, which is not a surprise.  What was startling to his teacher, and what I thought was pretty cool, was that he put 3 of the apples in their mouths.  A few minutes later, he went to his teacher and asked, "May I please have another apple paper. The kids' apples are in their bellies now."  She let him have another paper.

Isaac is doing very well at homeschool co-op and even helps to clean the rooms afterward to earn money for things he wants to save up for. He has the opportunity to sit and watch a movie, but chooses cleaning instead!  I love this kid and it makes the cleaning job (we have for 6 weeks) go so much faster and a lot more fun!  Hopefully, Zeb will post soon about Isaac and his money scheme plan!

 

Hi-Tech Sight Words

...if PowerPoint can be considered "hi-tech".

Isaac likes to play on the computer. I want to drill him on his sight words. Tiffany had the brilliant idea to combine the two. Result:

Just the three of us: Isaac, me, and my bald spot.

More to come. Our count stands at 30 down out of 315 (but we've only presented him with 50 so far over two days).

I Didn't Think You Were in the Library That Long

Monday, and time for our weekly walk to the library. Thankfully it was chilly today, so no mosquitoes in the woods between here and there.

After picking up our requisite train books, and grabbing Rookie Readers about New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut, we headed to check out with the librarian. I forget exactly what she said, but we started talking about all the state books. I trotted out my trained monkey asked Isaac to tell her what the capitals of Delaware and Pennsylvania are, and threw in my latest favorite my-four-year-old-knows-this fact about the source of maple syrup.

She was duly impressed, and when I mentioned we were homeschooling, she offered her observation that the homeschoolers that come in to the library are much more willing to engage in conversation with adults, a trait that she wished her children had picked up. Take that, "what about socialization" nay-sayers!

Needless to say, Isaac tends to make quite an impression wherever he goes.

Tomorrow: first day of co-op!

Explorers

And now, for something completely different, a guest post from my wife. She regularly photoblogs over at Adventures of the Acuff Family.

Next Tuesday morning, we embark on a new adventure, one that we have been anticipating for a few years and are excited to see come to fruition.  Isaac will begin attending a homeschool co-op in Ann Arbor. It has hundreds of kids from birth to high school and a wide variety of classes available.

Explorers Homeschool Co-Op meets at a local Lutheran church with tons of classroom space, a gym, and cozy little hospitality room that the moms (and dads) get to hang out in during their "off" hour.  "Off hour"?  That would be the hour you are NOT helping out in a classroom or teaching a class or helping in the nursery or cleaning up rooms or playing tour guide to the nearest restroom.  

Each mom (and a few dads) is given two jobs. One is in a classroom. This can be teaching, co-teaching, or being an assistant.  The other is a general task, like setting up at the beginning of the day or running the vacuum at the end of it.  Some parents are lucky enough to teach or co-teach two classes and therefore, escape the menial tasks the rest of us get to do!

Isaac will be in the "lower elementary", which encompasses K4/5  and 1st/2nd grades.  His classes this semester are Storybook Stew and Storybook Forest.  Since Isaac LOVES to read, this should be a fantastic morning for him!  In Storybook Stew, they read a story and prepare a simple meal or fancy snack that has something to do with the book they read.  In Storybook Forest, they get to read about various topics and do activities that are associated with it.

My primary job will be to assist in the Art class for the K4/5 group.  This could be fun....I think I'll make myself an apron between now and then!  My secondary job will be to clean up, which would be fine, except that Isaac will have to be with me while I do it and he HATES the vacuum cleaner.  We'll see how this one pans out!  Zeb and I will take turns throughout the 12 week semester, depending on the stability of Esther's health.  Zeb is capable of most everything I am, but there a few things that still only mommy can do!

We are looking forward to exploring our new homeschooling world, making new friends, and seeing how Isaac continues to blossom into an amazing little man as he interacts with peers his age and others around him.

I hope you'll keep coming back to see what our little guy and littlest gal are up to during the week and all that they are learning as we go...

Library Day

So, clearly, it's easier to set up a blog than to maintain it. Oh well.

Isaac and I just got back from a walk to the library. Some helpful (friendly, courteous, kind, ...) Eagle Scout cut a new path through the woods behind the library to the park near our house. It's much more interesting to walk through nature and along the old railroad tracks than along the residential sidewalks. Now we just need to remember the mosquito repellent!

We took a bunch of books back and got a bunch of new ones, mainly on trains (natch) and Pennsylvania, which is our next state about which to learn. I also grabbed a book on woodchucks (groundhogs) in honor of Punxsutawney Phil, a geography DVD, and Isaac added a Signing Time DVD and two other books that caught his eye.

My administrative home education goals for this week include hammering out our educational philosophy and typing up the curriculum guides that Tiffany and I worked on during our drive home from Tennessee over Labor Day weekend. I know I want to take it easy with the formal curriculum plans this year, but I still think we should have some broad goals to work toward. I also need to sort out a rough schedule for our weeks, so we don't get to Saturday and wonder why nothing got done.

Sorry for the lack of updates. We had a great learning day at the fair last week - lots of baby and adult animals to discover. Tiffany and I picked up a bunch of workbooks and flashcards at Target yesterday for 70 cents each - check out your local Target's dollar section if you get a chance.

Time to cook dinner and read - Tiffany and Isaac have already started in on one of the steam engine books!

Learning for Today

Both kids at home and just me - and I was so sleepy! With both at home, there's no good downtime during the day. And here I am up late on the blog. Oh well...

Art/Geography/Spelling

Isaac is nigh-on obsessed with his Magna Doodle drawing board - it's nearly an extension of his hand at this point. And when he's not drawing trains, he can turn out some impressive stuff for his age:

The United States. Note Lake Michigan.

He just sat down this afternoon and wrote this out. I didn't have the heart to tell him that we won't get to Alaska for another year. At least I caught it on camera before he erased it (he's got a quick trigger finger!).

Math
He doesn't like math, and he'll tell you as much. In a bout of wishful thinking, we have a few basic math workbooks lying around. This morning he picked up a first grade workbook and, with some coaching from me, turned out the following:

Note his 6 on the left hand page, my subsequent demonstration 6 under the equals sign, and his next 6 on the right hand page. And of course, we had to put stickers at the top of both pages.

Learning Check-In for August 31 (and previous dates)

This past weekend, Isaac, my dad, and I all went to the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum. We've got a membership, but this was my first time. Definitely cool, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't get sidetracked on a couple exhibits, although it didn't really seem to match the eight years of hype I've been building up for myself.

Isaac did announce that he created a "red, dark, red, dark" pattern in lights by throwing switches at the counting machine, though. That was kind of cool. I had a picture, but it's apparently fallen through the cracks of my keyboard.

Esther, on the other hand, is learning to appreciate the products of American agriculture:

Today, August 31, Isaac and I read a couple books together (including The United Tweets of America, all about state birds) and he played Uno with me and Tiffany (working on color and number recognition). While we were outside, he checked to see if the tomatoes were ripe (not quite yet - they were only "light red" not "dark red") and he spotted a squirrel on the other side of the courtyard, both things I would chalk up under the heading of science/environment. He's also working on his hand-eye coordination by practicing using the touchpad on the laptop to click on YouTube videos of trains.

Putting on the Brakes

So, I had the realization last night that perhaps I'm pushing too hard on developing a curriculum **RIGHT NOW**. I've had marketability on the brain at the expense, I think, of my child's education, which should be the primary focus here.

He's four. In some ways, an advanced four, but he's four. I don't need to break my neck creating the *perfect* curriculum by next week. Let's just go with the flow for at least until January and see how it goes. I can develop curriculum later. Maybe let's wait for "kindergarten" and see how far along he is.

That said, I'm liking some of the curriculum resources that I've come across.

• Typical Courses of Study by grade level from World Book. Tiffany and I read through the preschool and kindergarten lists last night - Isaac is definitely beyond the preschool things (with one or two exceptions) and definitely not at the kindergarten level yet. I'll probably refer to the kindergarten TCoS over the next year, but I figure we've got two years to get those done.
• I checked out How to Write a Low-Cost/No-Cost Curriculum for Your Home-School Child (quite the title) from our library this past week. It's information-dense (and could stand new typography to open up the pages a bit), but I like how it steps you through the process of developing individualized curriculum. Again, it starts with kindergarten-level goals, so I will likely refer to it often over the next year and ease into things. First objective: determine our philosophy of education and life-long learning goals for Isaac.

For the immediate future, we'll probably stick with our geography framework - one state per week in the order they joined the union. We'll read lots of books from the library on the state (e.g., Delaware), items associated with that state (e.g., chickens, ladybugs, maybe holly), try to find some typical foods from the state (saltwater taffy, anyone?), work on reading and drawing maps, etc. Once we hammer out some broad objectives for each state (hopefully, over the holiday), I'll share them here. If I can pull in some "curriculum" ideas from my various sources, so much the better, but I'm not going to make myself crazy pushing it.

Where Insanity is Defined

If insanity truly is repetition expecting different results, count me in.

I've tried lots of times before to create a blog. Now, however, I think I may have a workable angle: stay-at-home dad recently separated (voluntarily!) from corporate life and re-tasked as a homeschool teacher for our four-year-old son (and eventually our 17mo daughter). Along the way, I'd like to maintain and expand our food garden, get into canning, maybe drop some green lifestyle tips and tricks (although we're far from perfect), develop my photography skills, and perhaps write e-books/homeschool curriculum. Gotta pay the bills somehow!

We're just starting to formally (as formal as it gets, I suppose) homeschool our son, and he's currently big into geography, US states in particular. A couple nights ago, my wife and I began to brainstorm curriculum ideas based on the order each state joined the Union. Delaware is first up, and since I happen to know a little something about the state <cough>livedtherefortwentyfouryears<cough>, here's hoping things come together smoothly.

Stop by to see how we're doing and determine whether or not I have lost my mind. Feel free to 'follow' our journey - I'll do my best to make it an interesting ride.