Sprouting

A friend of ours is making a large order to www.sproutpeople.com.  We are so excited!  It is a great start to our first year of gardening.
We are ordering:Broccoli Sprouts Pea Carnival Mung Quinoa Wheat

To be used in bread and baked goods and on salads. Our little experiment with the Garbanzo beans went really well, even though they were not considered the "sprouting" kind..all 10 of them sprouted!
This summer, we're going to follow the Square Foot Gardening method. Our soil is horrible, anyway, and I like the Mel's Mix that he uses--I don't have to worry about weeds like in normal soild.

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Plant Unit: Lesson One

We started our unit on Plants last week.  We're using the curriculum "Great Science Adventures-Plants" to get us started on our way to creating our garden this year.
This week, we started our avocado project.  Today was day one:  we soaked our avocado seed, cut off the top 1 cm, and planted it:


Each girl made a small book in which to record the growth progress.  The girls will draw a picture every 4 or 5 days and I'll take pictures.
We're also starting to sprout our own beans.  We didn't take them out of the water yet--apparently we forgot we have to wet them a few times a day, not immerse them longer than 24 hours, so tomorrow we'll change over to wetting them through a cheesecloth.  If it works well for us, we'll do it more often.  I like to make Thai and Chinese dishes, so having fresh sprouts will be great!


I also checked out a few books on gardening and children.  There were some fantastic ideas for fairly easy projects that I'm really looking forward to doing with the kids.   
I'm posting a link a tthe top called "Backyard Science" which will highlight all of the science projects we do related to home and backyard.

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Great Backyard Bird Count

The Great Backyard Bird Count is approaching again!

What is it?"The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds. We'll be adding updated 2009 GBBC materials as they become available."

What do you do?

• Print a Tally Sheet (birds by region)
  
• On February 13-16, 2009 plan to spend a minimum of 15 minutes per day.  
• Enter your data ONLINE!

It really is that easy!
Click the links, there are many great resources, including a site for bird identification.

HOW TO ATTRACT BIRDS:
Here is a wonderful "recipe" to make bird biscuits.  Hang them all over your trees;  they are very low-cost and attractive!  We made our biscuits in heart shapes and we're giving them out--along with an information page about the Bird Count--to our friends and family for Valentine's Day!

Birdseed Biscuits
3 Cups of Birdseed6 TBSP Flour3/4 Cup Water
Combine all ingredients, stir well.  Place a metal cookie cutter in any shape (we used hearts, butterfly and a flower) on a cookie sheet lined with foil.  Spray the cookie cutter and foil with oil (or rub with oil).  Spoon the mixture into the cutter.  Place a straw in the middle (cut in half or thirds works well) to leave a hole for a ribbon.  Pack the mixture down a little.
*After the first batch, we decided the flour needed to be increased from 4 TBSP to 5-6 TBSP.  The first batch didn't hold together very well, but the second batch is doing great.  


Place in a 170 degree oven for about an hour, until the biscuit is hard.  Let it cool, remove from the cutter, remove the straw, and thread a ribbon through the middle.  Hang outside!
Makes 6-7 smaller, 4-5 larger biscuits.



Homeschoolers:
There is a special page for kids with activities.  What a great way to get your kids involved in "Backyard Science!"

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