Poison Ivy

Well, our Plants unit has momentarily taken a different direction than I expected!

Yesterday the kids were outside playing in the yard for quite a long time (happily planting and watering seeds for four o'clocks -- since I wasn't able to find any of my plant list at the nursery -- and then making mud pies). I was busy thinking what a super mom I am to let my kids play in the mud for hours and then this morning TA DA! Leah had broken out all over in poison ivy. I used to get poison ivy all the time as a kid and so it was no big deal to treat it. Now the kids know not to head over to the part of the woods where the poison ivy is, and I know that we have poison ivy in the yard, so we're all winners. [wry grin] It was no big deal, really, but sort of funny to me that it happened during our Plants unit. :-)

Our actual Plants theme for this week is supposed to be the parts of a plant that we eat (which ends up being all the parts of the plant, and so it is a good review of plant parts as well as the process by which a seed grows). 5 days in a week is perfect for this. Seeds on Day One. You can eat sunflower seeds, almonds or other nuts, or pop popcorn. Then we had a Root day. Roots are carrots, turnips, radishes, and so on. You can also do potatoes and sweet potatoes. Leaves is super easy -- cabbage, kale, spinach, lettuce, all kinds of salad greens. Also herbs. Natalie and I just made a Triple-Herb Cucumber Soup and the plant materials in it were scallion, serrano chile, cucumber, dill, tarragon and chive. After Leaves we did Flowers. This isn't as hard as it sounds... there are edible flowers (like violets and nasturtiums). You also get to eat broccoli and cauliflower on this day. Fruit is the last day and the best! Our field trip, which will be tomorrow, is to go pick strawberries. Yummy.

Next week is the final week of this unit and I want to do a Soil focus, with lots of digging in the dirt (hurrah!) and start our worm bin.

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