Spring Project: Eggshell Planters

As spring and Easter approached, I remembered an activity my friend told me about several years ago...using egg shells as planters for grass seeds.  This is such an easy project for kids.  With just a little supervision they are able to practice "gardening", learn about plants/seeds, and welcome a new season.

I began by collecting eggshells.  I washed and rinsed them thoroughly, and I even sprayed them with Clorox Anywhere (we've met Salmonella before so I was super-cautious).  Once I had enough shells, we moved the project outdoors.  

An old egg carton helped keep the shells steady as the kids filled them with potting soil.  Then they sprinkled rye grass seeds over the soil and covered them with more soil.

This led to a discussion about what seeds need in order to survive and grow.  While the boys went off to ride bicycles, Memphis Belle and I headed inside to water our newly planted seeds.

We placed the egg planters in ceramic bunnies that I bought from Hobby Lobby several years ago.  We made sure they were close to a window for natural sunlight.  Each day the kids would check on their seeds.  After only a few days small, green sprouts could be seen.  The kids were so excited!

And they continued to grow and grow.

Save your eggshells, gather some seeds, and watch new life grow.

Jenny

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

1 Corinthians 3:6-7

Resurrection Week

As our friends and family enjoyed Spring Break the week before Easter, we spent the week in our new home catching up on school work.  The weeks before were spent packing, unloading, and organizing our new house so we were a little behind. ;)  

Since it was Resurrection Week, I wanted that to be the focus of our school work.   The first thing we did was create our Resurrection Lapbook.  I found a wonderful link with many printables for the lapbook.  

We printed off the lapbook cover, Easter Bingo (which Old Crow wanted to play everyday), How We Celebrate flipbook, a Bible verse (John 11:25) for copywork. 

We also found Israel on the map and used the pages from his A Beka social studies book to learn about places and culture of Israel. It helped him to realize that the places we read about from long ago are real and current even today.

For a fun math activity, we used jelly beans to practice several skills.  I filled a jar with jelly beans and we discussed how to estimate.  Then we poured some of the jelly beans onto the table and graphed the colors, which allowed us to find the greatest and least. 

After the graphing activity, we wanted to count all the jelly beans in the jar to see if our estimations were close.  We grouped them by 10s, which made counting them a lot easier.

 For our daily Bible time, we focused on Jesus' days before His resurrection.  I used the Resurrection Eggs to help facilitate our discussions.  We opened two eggs each day and read the corresponding scripture.  It was a great reminder for even Clark and me...reading and focusing on all Jesus endured for us. 

  And Memphis Belle enjoyed playing with the container of plastic eggs...although she prefers them to be filled with chocolate.  We called her our little egg thief.  She would sneak off with the filled eggs, open them, take off the candy wrapper, and hide and eat the chocolate.  She was a mess!! (literally and figuratively)

Jenny