The Private Life of Plants, Gardening & Art

We got crafty and made a bouquet of flowers, complete with pollinators - naturally!!! The children drew about 5 flowers each and replicated the one they decided was the best to "create" a flower for our little craft bouquet. It ended up being really lovely. Dante and Labyrinth both decided to do blue/purple bells, Kai did a rainbow and Raven did a pink flower and a sunflower on the same stem. Monika and I took the easy option of grabbing one of my flowers from my scrapping stash for hers, but she did the sticking on and the drawing of the leaves. They did it in great detail the older ones obviously more than the younger (as we learnt in a previous lesson about the male/female parts of a flower, so the anther (which is full of pollen) is on Labyrinth, and Dante has put in his stigma/style parts and Kai has included the ovary.

And here is part of my Mother's Day gift. The gift of seedlings for my new garden (the garden isn't ready yet, but the seedlings are growing madly. I am growing Kale, Cauliflower, and Bok or is it Pak Choy?. I also have a little sweet basil that will be a support plant to my tomatoes. Also - an updated pic of my bananna plant.

Forgive me if there is strange things with formatting - this often happens.

And now for some art. This is Labyrinth's art. Tree with animals and a drawing of the characters (in their respective animal forms in Fruits Basket.) She recently brought a Fruits Basket comic book and has all the episodes. She loves it! She's not as capable of reading as her brothers but she has inside her an incredible imagination. She is struggling though with her issues (behavioural - her window of learning is limited and even our in home child carer agrees she would not cope in a normal school situation because of her highly emotional issues.)

Dante's Snake. Dante resists doing much writing, he takes so long to get into it and actually write anything but ends up doing a great job usually. He is reading easily at grade 5 level and loves animals, particularly reptiles/mammals/fish/amphibians.

Kai's Octoman and House. While Kai is as capable of reading as well as Dante, or is better in some cases) he is no where up there with actual writing. He does surprise me though, sometimes like yesterday when he wrote 5 reasons he should be allowed to play computer games *)

Raven's house and T-Rex.

Raven has been learning colours and numbers, and he does an awful lot of drawing. He likes being read to, playing games on the PlayStation, in particular Dora and Diego. He is so absorbant right now - wanting to learn everything he can!

Monika's drawing and a spray art Butterfly.

Monika is so keen to be a part of everything that goes on, she is just so sweet. Her vocabulary and understanding is profound at times. She can understand subtle hints as well as three step instructions, she is also obsessed by shoes at the moment. She loves putting them on and taking them off! She can also put on some clothes without help. She's also a book nerd. She'll sit there and listen to you read all the way through such books as Dr Suess's Green Eggs and Ham or a Thomas the Tank Engine book - the medium sized ones like Harold's Mail Adventure. She's 20 months old.