Working in the Garden

We have three tomato plants in our garden. I bought them at the Dallas Farmer's Market at discount price because they were small and "ugly". With the help of little hands they've doubled in size. Here is one of our very first buds.

Gardening is a new activity for our kids and so are getting on those little gardening gloves!

I let the kids loose in a large dirt area next to our growing things. I ask them to weed and prep it for our soon to be pumpkin patch but they mostly just dig deep holes.

This little three year old loves to be in the garden. She tracks me down every time she pulls out a weed, "Weeeeeeed" she'll squeal.

Weeding is one of the best gardening activities for little children. The weeds take enough muscle to be interesting but not enough to be over-hard. It's lends itself to repitition and is never-ending. The children seem to be on a treasure hunt when they're weeding and when one is weeding the rest will invariably follow. It doesn't hurt that weeding demands the prehensile grasp.

This is a shot of our one cucumber plant. Flower before Fruit.

Making Messes

One of the most brilliant things a teacher can do is allow her little students to make big, messy mistakes.
At school when the kids paint, the table is invariably marked up. My lead said that we should make one table the "paint table" and tape it down with butcher paper, which will be removed (by the asst.) at the end of the day. I'm getting better at fighting these battles. I told her its a better lesson for the child to scrub up after himself. An otherwise obvious child may then become aware of his affect on the table and seek to control himself.

As the good doctor said, "It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has." (Dr. Montessori)