Tag: planting

Summer Boredom Bucket List: Day 2

Leave a comment

Boredom 8 l

As promised, here’s a second day’s worth of ideas to combat summer boredom. If you missed it, be sure to read the first four ideas here!

Idea 5: Plant Seeds. This boredom suggestion came at just the right time, since Travis was assigned a summer library challenge to help “Jack” grow the beans for his beanstalk.

Boredom 7 b

We germinated dried black beans overnight in a little water. The next morning, place a damp paper towel inside a zip-top plastic bag. Add the beans and tape in a sunny window.

Boredom 7 a

It was fun to watch these sprout over the course of a few days, even though we won’t have a garden to transplant them to when all is said and done.

Idea 6: Create Doodles from Ink Fingerprints. This idea was so fantastic it nearly merits its own post. Travis was really in a mood, so we started out simple: If he made a fingerprint with ink, I asked him, what could it be? He decided on bugs. One fingerprint could be a bee or a beetle.

Boredom 8 a

Two dots together were a butterfly. Five in a row made a caterpillar.

Boredom 8 b

Now Travis was getting the idea! He started to add details, like spots to ladybugs or wings to flies.

Boredom 8 f

He loved adding 8 legs to my spider. Our “garden” was soon so pretty Travis wanted to do it again on a second sheet of paper. Hmm… How to keep the game fresh?

Boredom 8 e

We tried dragging our ink fingers in a line for worms. These ended up looking a little silly…

Boredom 8 h

Well so now we needed silly bugs! What didn’t we have in the glorious work of art and imagination that followed? There were wizard caterpillars with gentlemen bugs with pipes and tophats:

Boredom 8 i

There were wizard bugs with beards and wands:

Boredom 8 j

There was even a king and queen with crowns! Then we drew a cloud, with fingerprint “raindrops” coming down… and then the raindrops came to life with smiles and hats.

Boredom 8 k

Travis worked on the details for nearly an hour! By the end we even had fingerprint bugs spitting water at each other. Who knew a doodle fingerprint could lead so far.

Boredom 8 n

Idea 7: Write a Rap About Your Pet. This prompt was hard for Travis, who declared himself not a singer and wasn’t initially interested. Aha, but could he be the DJ in charge of the beat for our rap song?

Boredom 9 a

Pretty soon he was playing around with an old keyboard, testing out demo beats and drums. Travis discovered he could increase the tempo and get the drums exactly as he wanted them.

Boredom 9 c

The kids had so much fun mixing and matching melodies and drum beats. You’ll notice little sister joined in and did some dance moves!

Boredom 9 d

So did we exactly follow the prompt to write a rap about our cat? No, but this sure busted boredom! How’s this for a quick solution:

Krishna, Krishna he’s our cat,

And we think that he is all that!

Idea 8: Create a Code. Here’s another prompt that was tough for Travis, since he’s just learning to read English, much less create a code in it. Instead, I created a code he had to crack.

Boredom 11 a

Each letter of the alphabet corresponded to its number. Hunting through the code, he then had to search for which letter lined up with the numbered spaces.

Boredom 11 b

He was so proud to solve it, revealing the answer of “Jabba the Hutt”, of course!

Boredom 11 c

Green Time: Plant a Vegetable Garden

1 Comment

Plant Garden (2)

Yes, here we are planting seeds with our winter coats on. Hopefully from here on out April feels like April, not January! Needless to say, we were eager to turn to this month’s Green Time from Ranger Rick Jr. without waiting for the weather to cooperate!

Ideally, you’ll have a plot of land in which you can truly plant vegetable seeds. Those of you who have followed this blog for a long time know that we used to only have a balcony, and how excited I was when we graduated to a patio with access to a small patch of grass. We still have no true yard, so our “garden” for this project is in a shoebox… which means likely our plants will crowd one another and not grow very tall. Still, I wanted Travis simply to enjoy fresh air and the tactile feeling of dirt and seeds, even if we don’t end up with edible veggies. If you have a real garden, please share your results in the comments!

So, back to our shoebox garden… First we needed to buy seeds. We headed to the garden store for one pack each of the magazine’s suggestions: tomatoes, beans, carrots, zucchini, and peas.

Plant Garden (3)

The first novelty for Travis was seeing the difference in size – pea seeds much bigger than tomato ones, for example.

Plant Garden (6)

Even mommy didn’t know what carrot seeds looked like!

We filled our shoebox with a nice layer of soil.

Plant Garden (1)

Next, we carefully dug a small hole for each veggie and placed two or three seeds in each hole.

Plant Garden (4)

Travis loved the planting, and patting the dirt back over the holes.

Plant Garden (5)

A little bit of water (which we’ll do each morning), and now we wait!

Plant Garden (7)

Travis had so much fun with it that I let him play indoors with the leftover bean seeds with his shovel and some old flower pots.

Plant Garden (8)

I’ll update this post if our veggies manage to sprout in their shoebox conditions!

Update: We have veggies! Travis is thrilled when we go out each morning now to water the plants, all of which our coming up – tiny zucchini leaves, tiny carrot tops, little bean curls… Exciting!

Plant a Garden alt