May 2019

This month's suggestions feel incomplete to me.  We had a crazy April and now are getting ready to go up to Boston for my oldest son's wedding!  I just haven't been able to focus on this blog as much lately.  I've been working on posts but I am having a hard time pulling them together and getting them published.  So here's the month of May's suggestions.

Rabbit trail ideas for this month:

Mary
Flowers, plants and trees
Gardening/farming

Mary
Learn hymns
Make a Mary Garden
May crowning of Mary


Books:
Mary Mother of Jesus by Tomi dePaolo
Take It To the Queen
Speak Lord I am Listening rosary for children

Picture Book Read Alouds for Flowers, Plants, Trees:
Ferdinand the Bull
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
Miss Rumphius
The Giving Tree
Magic School Bus Gets Planted

Family Read Alouds:
The Secret Garden
The Little Prince
Farmer Boy or any Little House series that features planting.

For teens:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Flowers for Algernon
Walden (about much more than flora, but it's an influential American classic - even if you wind up not really agreeing with Thoreau's take on reality.)
The Girl of the Limberlost

Copywork:
Trees by Joyce Kilmer (a Catholic poet from the WWI era)
My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

Scripture:
Mt 6, 28-29 (Lillies of the field)

Movie:
The Man Who Planted Trees - exquisite short animated French film.  Don't miss it!
Lilies of the Field starring Sidney Poitier

Field trips:
Nature trails, centers and parks
Arboretum
Visit public/historic gardens
A trip to a garden center store
Visit a botanical garden

Activities:
  • Photosynthesis experiment with spinach
  • celery food dye experiment
  • Sprout a seed
  • Here's a website about gardening with children.  There is a plethora of information out there.  

Things I've done with my kids at various points over the last 21 years:

  • Planted a vegetable patch
  • container grown tomato plants
  • Herb garden on the kitchen window sill
  • Taught and paid them to weed the garden
  • Older kids learned to mow the lawn
  • Planted sunflowers
  • Planted bulbs (this is actually best to do in the fall, at least with daffodil bulbs) 
  • Bought a flat of marigold seedlings and planted those together
  • Foraged for things like wild strawberries, wild onions, sorrel, dandelion leaves.mulberries.
  • Gathered wild flowers, pressed them between the pages of a thick book.  Preserved them between two sheets of wax paper, using a hot iron.  
  • Counted tree rings
  • Learned to identify trees in our area
  • Learned to id poison ivy 
It is easy to go off on tangents with this theme:  growing food can lead to learning to cook food.  Gardening can lead to interest in soil science, worms, bugs, composting, the carbon cycle, the water cycle, pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds, etc.

Over the course of 21 years, we did butterfly hatching twice and silk worms once.

Studying the flora of other places on the globe can also be interesting:  rain forests, deserts, tundra, etc.

Sorry, I didn't really complete this month!  I'll do better for June!


















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