Planting time!

Our planting schedule has been a little delayed by the return of chilly weather and the torrential rain--seeds can only take so much before they get washed away! We're not going to let the delay change our plans, though.  Yesterday we planted peas in the raised bed, and last week we started sprouting our beans in plastic bags:

They're just about ready to go in the cups with soil, so we'll be doing that in the next couple of days.

In non-gardening news, Zed and I attended a class a couple of weekends ago based around the concept of "loose parts"--objects that don't have a set use but that can be repurposed in multiple ways with some imagination.  The materials we have out for the kids already include lots of objects like this, but the class was a good refresher, and we came away with some new ideas.

One idea we came away with is putting together a selection of hardware (large nuts and bolts and washers, etc.) that can be used together to build things, sorted out, turned into patterns, dumped into a truck, or whatever else the kids can think of to do with them.  We got a small selection over the weekend to test the idea, and we should have some more soon.  We would also like to build a music wall for the kids to bang around on outdoors, though we need to brainstorm a way to make it portable or cover it so we can have peaceful outdoor time, too.

A fantastic example of a music wall.

That's all for now!
Leslie

Welcoming Spring

Spring is always an exciting time of year for the daycare as we watch everything turning green and make plans for the garden.  We have much more light and warm weather for playing outside than we did a month ago, and everyone has been enjoying that.  Today we pulled the big, round porch table out into the yard and ate lunch in the garden!

The strawberry starts that we planted last week are looking very happy with all the rain we've had, and the kids have been splashing up a rainstorm of their own in the puddles.  We'll be planting snap peas together in our raised bed very soon, and we have plans to sprout some beans in clear cups so we can watch roots growing. Our veggies that like warmer weather will be getting started inside, in the back window where we can see them grow, too.

We're taking things a little slow this week as we welcome our new friends to the daycare, but we're still enjoying our last big project in the quiet room.

That's all for now, but we're blowing the dust off this blog and we'll be keeping it updated much more regularly!