Week 23 - The Carrot Seed {part 1}

 The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss is a very simple book that teaches hard work & patience.  The little boy in the story plants a carrot seed.  His whole family tells him, it won't come up.  The boy continues to pull the weeds and water the soil regardless of his nay-saying family.  Until, one day the carrot comes up!  At the end, you see the little boy with his wheelbarrow overflowing with his gigantic prize of a carrot.

  To start the week, I made a sensory bin with several items from the story.  I used a plastic tub, soil, boy & watering can cutout from story, and plastic carrots (purchased at the $1 store after Easter!!).  I also made a game with the "Will It Come Up? printable from Homeschool Share's lapbook to go along with a great carrot game I stumbled upon at Sorting Sprinkles.  The carrots are made out of pipe cleaners and the boys practiced planting and pulling them up with tweezers.  Nana, unknowingly, provided us with some carrot Easter Eggs that I filled with green pom-poms.  They used these for planting in the soil and in the egg carton.  You can see all of our fun below:

Watering!

 

   Next, we read Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace and Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens (the boys favorite go along book for the week).  We talked about seeds and got out some of our seed packets to inspect different kinds and discussed how God had made them all different.  And, each seed contains the information inside of it to make the plant.  After the discussion, we planted some seeds of our own.  First we planted some carrot seeds using a damp paper towel and a plastic bag (and watched them grow throughout the week):

{Before}  Teeny, tiny carrot seeds.

{After}  They came up!

   We also planted a bean seed in a mason jar and used the damp paper towel technique, again.  This allowed us to view the bean as it went through the growing process.  I made the seed growth booklet (from the homeschool share lapbook) for them to document the growth of their bean:

Getting our beans ready

Watering

 And now, the beauty of God's handiwork:

 

   Pretty amazing to watch it all unfold...

  In the Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! book, the little bear grew a grass head.  So, I thought it might be fun to add something else to the "growing" list this week.  Besides, who doesn't want to have their own grass head?!  I used Just Being a Mum's method:  old panty hose, grass seed, cotton balls, and some rubber bands. 

Scooping/Measuring out Seed

Adding the cotton balls

Completed heads- ready for watering!

After about a week-ish of growing.  He looks like he's in a boy band.  Don't fret, you will see more pictures of grass-man!

   The next round of go along books included:  The Giant Carrot by Jan Peck and The Enormous Carrot by Vladimir Vagin.  The books had a similar feel to them.  The characters had to use their strength (as one) to pull up a carrot.  Afterward, the carrot was used to make lots of different dishes:  soup, cake, ice cream, raw, juice, puddin', etc.).  Of course, we HAD to make some sort of food dish to go along with our carrot theme.  Before we did, we practiced some cutting skills.  First, on our wooden fruit/veggies:

              Then on some real carrots and a very dull butter knife.  It was a rough go, but they were able to chop through the carrots.

   We were ready to move on to shredding carrots (which I did 98% of, in fear they would shred their fingers off) for our carrot cake.

Trying to mix in the flour

A little help holding the bowl, as the last of the flour goes in!

Mixing in the carrots

 The final (scrumptious) product:

   ....part 2 post of The Carrot Seed coming soon...  Click Here for part 2!!