2. Beet or weed??

3. Carrot or weed??

4. Thin the lettuce?

Yes or no?

5. Swiss chard ready to pick or let it grow some more??

6. Is this a bad sign for our tomato plants or normal?

7. Did I thin the cucumber enough??

I know.

You're laughing your bum off at me now.

But I am really getting into this whole gardening thing.

I might even be considered hardcore....

That's right.

I was out pulling weeds in the rain yesterday.

Hubby thought a pic in my rainy gardening attire would be fun.

And even though I don't know a whole lot about gardening, I'm enjoying learning together with my girls!

Piper was right out there pulling weeds with me.

Plus I know that these are good signs that we must be doing something right!

(And my attempt to be like Heather, my gardening hero...I can hear her comments as I type this. Hahaha! But seriously, check out her blog! It is tres cool!)

"If you plant seeds with love, love will surely grow."

More and more I am finding that Taitum is a social learner. All of my attempts of sitting and playing with her alone were rejected this week. On the other hand, every single time that I sat down to do something with Piper, she demanded to be a part of it! Since clueing into this, I've made a habit of having something ready to go for her, too. Usually its the things I had tried to do with her before but to no avail. In some ways, I'm disappointed by this. I really would like the opportunity to spend time with her alone. I also realize that I need to just appreciate the fact that she truly loves being a part of our school time. I know its really not a terrible thing that she prefers to spend her play time independantly. She's just drastically different from Piper who is more likely to want my attention constantly! I am thankful for how much these girls enjoy each other's company and am learning to take advantage of the times Taitum accepts my sole attention such as at bedtime storytime! In the end, that is just one of the many reasons I am choosing to homeschool - so I can tailor my children's education to the way that they learn best!

Enough rambling. Here is our week in Tot School:

Taitum sorted some blocks by color. We do a lot of this and its cute to watch how sometimes she stacks the blocks, other times lines them up - whatever suits her fancy that day!

Daddy helped her to participate during our milky rainbows experiment with Piper.

Taitum is obsessed with this activity - pushing pom poms through a hole cut in the lid of a yogurt container! So simple yet so fascinating!

She LOVED painting with vegetables! I think this had more to do with the mess factor than anything else!

Oh the joy!

She also enjoyed getting her hands dirty in the Goop we created, too!

Taitum is starting to get the hang of the Do-A-Dot markers and choosing to play with them anytime we have a free craft time!

This week's challenge? Well, look and see...

Something in her mouth constantly! She walks around like this! Her favorite is that cylinder block you see but she was quite content to have that plastic hamburger patty in her mouth quite often this week! I know she's teething and all but this is getting ridiculous!!

Taitum's successes of the week were 1) returning to her regular cheery ol' self and 2) appropriately responding to me when I ask her to come see me for some reason. We've really been working on obedience in this area since her usual response has been to run away or shake her head at me. It was so rewarding to see my consistency in correcting her when she didn't obey paying off! 

That's all for this week!  For more ideas to do with your tot, click on the button below!

A while ago, I heard from a friend about how she did letter hunts with her kids. I've been meaning to try it out and finally got around to it this week! I hid cards with the letter 'V' on them all around the livingroom one morning. When Piper got up she enjoyed the challenge of  finding them all!

Piper is becoming very adept at putting together puzzles. I pulled out this floor puzzle the other day to give her something to do while I was cleaning. I didn't really think she'd be able to do it all on her own but the next thing I knew it was completed! I kept throwing puzzles at her and she kept putting them together! I think we just might have to move on to the ones with smaller pieces! 

She sorted her vegetable cards according to color.

After reading Little Pea, Piper counted using frozen peas as markers and number printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Her favorite part? Getting to eat them at the end! She also LOVED the book! Its about a little pea who's parents serve him candy for supper. Little pea does not like candy but he has to eat 4 more bites if he wants dessert. He struggles through it and is rewarded with his favorite dessert: spinach! Piper thought this was hilarious and has continued to talk about it all week!

I already told you about our block garden! It was the highlight of our day! Daddy later played this with her but added a fun element to it - she'd go to her room while Matt added something to her garden - one time a really tall weed, another time a bear eating the veggies and then bugs all over the garden! Upon returning she would have to deal with the problem in her garden! Isn't Daddy so creative?!

So remember the vegetable pictures Piper colored last week? Well, this week she cut them out....

(I just love that very serious look of concentration!)

And together we created this little mobile! So hideous, yet so adorable! :)

(I found the printable and the idea here.)

Next up: Painting with vegetables! I had carrots, broccoli and onions on hand so thats what we used! The broccoli made a really cool print! ...The onion was a tad too stinky! Hehehe!

The paintings prettied up my kitchen, too!

My battery died before I got to take a picture of Piper doing this file folder game but it is worth sharing! Its a vegetable pattern match from Homeschool Share. Not only did it relate to this week's theme but I thought it would be helpful for Piper. She has struggled with catching on to the idea of patterns so I thought that this would be helpful in that she is copying the pattern to her left. Hopefully, this will reinforce the idea!

As we continue through our schedule of books from Sonlight, we have begun reading about the 5 senses in the Usborne Flip Flap Body Book. I thought it would be fun to start exploring the senses and so have planned a few things for each. We'll continue with this next week but this week we did sight and touch.

For sight, we did an experiment where you watch the effect of putting a Q-tip dipped in dish soap into milk with drops of food coloring in it. The milk repels the dish soap and the dye is pushed all around the plate! Its very fun to watch these milky rainbows! I found this idea at 123Child.com where there are a multitude of ideas for sensory activities! 

Finally, for the sense of touch we made some Goop! A simple mixture of 1 part water to 3 parts cornstarch and you have lots of messy fun! This stuff seriously mesmerizes ME too though! One second its a solid mass in your hand, the next second its melting between your fingers! So cool! And as messy as it was, the clean up was a cinch!

Are you tired out yet?! I know I am! But what a great week! Now its time to cozy up and watch the snowstorm happening outside my window! Have a great weekend!

I'm linking up to the following:

Because we have been doing a vegetable theme we have also been talking about where vegetables come from - gardens! So as part of our imaginative play the other day, we made a block garden!

Here is our block garden all set up! Piper was very proud of it!

The colored blocks were the weeds that we had to pull out!

We talked about what the plants need to grow - sunlight, good soil and water. I asked Piper to find something that we could water the vegetable plants with. She grabbed one of my post it notes and began hydrating our little garden!

Next, we harvested the vegetables.

We cut them up and threw them in a pot so we could make vegetable soup! (Our Melissa and Doug Cutting Food worked perfectly for this!)

We took our pot full of cut up veggies to Piper's kitchen and put them on the stove. Piper is warning me that the pot is hot and that is why she is using a potholder to pick up the lid!

Pipe set the table for us and served the soup. Before sitting down she also popped a cake in the oven so it would be ready in time for dessert! What a great little hostess!

Before we ate she thanked God for our food. :)

Then we gobbled up her delicious creation! Mmmm! Nothing like fresh from the garden vegetable soup!

Taitum buzzed around through the entire process, helping out where she could. She was especially fond of the water bottle and making sure we all had enough water to drink!

I always have to push myself to initiate imaginary play with the kids but once we get into it, I have so much fun! It's especially rewarding when you let them take the lead and watch where they take the idea you've presented! Often they come up with far cooler things than you could even think of!

So get imaginative with your kids! You just might find it to be the best part of your day!