Gardening with kids and constellations

I have been so anxious to start our garden this year. It will be our first real garden since we lived in Boone and at that time the girls were so young and I really couldn't do that much with it. Now they are old enough to help and learn something and when they get bored they can do something else and I can keep working!! So now that we have a big back yard with lots of sun I am really excited about what all we can do with it. Claire recommended a book called Roots, Boots, Buckets and Boots that I checked out along with another gardening book for kids. I've read through both of them and gotten a ton of great ideas including planting a sunflower house (a square of all different size sunflowers with an opening for a door) and a pole bean teepee. They had other great ideas like pizza gardens and herb gardens--those are great books! I am going to attempt those first 2 that I mentioned. It's still too early here to plant those kinds of seeds outside so we have started some inside. The girls were out there with me just a few minutes ago and I burried them in dirt like I would sand. They had their sand shovels and were digging with me, then took off their shoes and played in the dirt--isn't that every kids dream!! Free play in a big dirt pile! I am very excited about the worms that I found in the bed. That means that the soil is okay:) We need to do some more work on it this weekend. William (daniel's dad) is coming down tomorrow to help us add some good stuff to the soil and get the beds ready. I've also got potatoes, onions, lettuce and spinach that I will plant this weekend.






This picture is of Ellen with some of her friends at the state museum. We had a program about constellations in that big grey blow up sphere that you see in the picture. The instructor taught is all about the night sky and the myths involved in all the constellatios. It is fascinating! I let Arianna stay downstairs in the museum with my friend Melissa and her younger 2 girls while I took Ellen and her oldest into the program. All of the kids that came (about 20 or so) are homeschooled and lots of them are in our playgroup. It was very comforting to see that Ellen has made friends here. She was holding hands with the other girls and it made me feel like we are settled in.