This will be the final update for our Root Vegetable Tabletop Garden, because it will sadly be going bye-bye.  It's been a wonderful learning project, which we have really enjoyed!  To see all of our original posts click HERE.  Following are the final pictures of the champion growers!

The turnip stalk (just the stalk) grew to be a

whopping 2 foot 2 inches tall!!!

Check out the roots.

The beet (to us) was the prettiest.

This photo doesn't show it, but the top of the carrot greens

were getting to heavy for it to stand upright in the jar.

The sweet potato was growing but at too slow a pace to bother with it, the rutabaga rotted too quickly on us, and the parsnip never produced; I'd like to try these again in the future though.

Hannah's strawberry is continuing to produce new little fruits.

We sure do hope we can have some tasty treats from it in May.

And our crocuses, violet and bean plant got a new home today!  You'll see more of that on our Green Hour Challenge #8 coming soon!

Tabletop Root Vegetable Garden

(the parsnip never produced, so we tossed it this week,

the turnip, carrot, beet and sweet potato remain)

 Wow, Turnip!

Beautiful Beet Leaves 

Hannah's Strawberry Plant

(tiny fruits keep forming!) 

 Carrots, Roma Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Basil Seedlings

(everything's sprouted; isn't it neat how the Roma Tomatoes are reaching towards the sunlight) 

Hannah and I think her bean plant looks like a garden fairy! 

I'm going to start calling these posts "Green Monday" because every Monday, as part of our Science/Nature lessons, we take notice of all the green things growing in our house and do journal pages and other things for them.

First, an update on our Tabletop Root Vegetable Garden...It's coming along very nicely.  The turnip continues to be the one growing like wild.  Our parsnip has still not produced anything, so today it will probably be tossed.  The sweet potato has sprouted but is sure slow as molasses!  The kids both filled out a journal sheet which I had gotten from Amanda's free downloads at Hearts and Trees.

Hannah's bean and wheat plants are still flourishing.  She completed a Plant Journal Page for these measuring their growth, and this week labeling the parts of the bean plant, thanks to help from this pdf file on labeling plants that I found.

Alex also filled out a journal sheet for his carrots which are popping up all over the place; we will thin those out shortly.

Grandpa came over on Saturday and brought Hannah a present.  They had fun planting her new strawberry plant!

It's doing really well so far.

And yesterday, Grandpa brought us another present from his garden.....LOTS of Crocuses!!!  We'll be getting them outside in our landscaping soon.

Two weekends ago, we started some vegetable seeds indoors.  We will be having a very small vegetable garden outside in the spring.  The kids planted roma tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and basil (esp. for Mommy!).

It is also coming along quite nicely, everything has sprung up except for the bell peppers.

The system we are using we bought at Lowe's.  It has been great because it's self watering and has a cover that goes on top, so it simulates a greenhouse effect.

We have lots more vegetable seeds to plant, but it's still a bit early; also we have lots of flowers too to get started.  Hmm, better get out my gardening gloves!!

We had a lovely Green Hour Challenge this week that I'll should have posted about by tomorrow!

Our root vegetable garden is doing really well.  We started our project using a carrot, beet, parsnip, sweet potato, rutabaga, and turnip.  A picture of when we first started it can be found here.  Just today we had to toss out the rutabaga, for some reason it had rotted underneath, very stinky!

Everything has started to sprout except for the parsnip; it's rooting underneath but nothing on top yet, I'm wondering if it's going to.  By far the turnip is the one that has really taken off!  It's amazing what it has done in just a week.

Also, the beet is really doing well.  I have to say the leaves are really cool looking, got red veins going through them (can't see that too well in the picture).

We will complete another Plant Journal Page tomorrow to document the changes.

Also Hannah's bean plant I think is growing to play the part of the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk!  She's been thrilled to see how fast it's shooting up.  Her wheat seed is coming up too and Alex's carrots, but I'll wait until they are more visible to take a picture.

And her violet that she collected on our nature walk is really flourishing.  No signs of blooming yet though.

However, her little baby crocus has finished it's blooming and is now starting to droop over (you can see it in the background of the above picture).  We will plant the corm outside after danger of frost.  We like to remember it this way:

The Crocus

by Walter Crane

The golden crocus reaches up

To catch a sunbeam in her cup.

The first morning it bloomed, we read this poem.  The sun was shining outside, so the girls and I ran out on our back deck and held our hands up like little cups trying to catch the sunbeams!  We are so wishing for spring!  At first Alex looked at us like we were crazy, but guess what, he went rushing outside right after us to catch a little sunbeam for himself!

I think I'm really starting to get a "hand" on this having fun with school thing!  We are truly having so much fun, and I'm building a learning relationship with my children that I have never had before.  This is very exciting and freeing to me!  At the end of our school day today, the kids came and asked me if they could take some old math workbooks and writing sheets and go "play school?"  Ok, trust me, in our house, that speaks for something!  Not every day is going this smoothly and well, but we are definitely headed in the right direction with our learning.

Here is our day at a glance:

ROOT GARDEN:  We observed our root garden; discussed what makes them root vegetables and compared them to tubar vegetables (with help from the book - The Vegetables We Eat by Gibbons); and completed a journal entry page.

Alex's journal entry

SCIENCE EXPERIMENT:  We read a "water evaporation" lesson from the book Super Science Projects About Earth's Soil and Water by Gardner (this series of books are expensive, but I know why, they're great!); we did the really fun science experiment that went with the lesson; and completed a "Science Journal" entry page (I'll be attaching this file to my Files to Share soon).  The kids LOVED this experiment!

SCIENCE/NATURE:  We are going to be focusing on "Birds" for our Green Hour Challenge this week.  So we did an introduction by reading some from the Handbook of Nature Study, and discussed why we'd want to study birds. This lead to a great discussion about the Wright Brothers and how humans studied birds when developing airplanes, and also how God uses His creation in nature to teach us lessons and to show Himself to us.  Hannah also made a cover for her new nature binder (3 ringed), and transferred her other journal into it.  We were using a spiral bound book before, but that did not work well because you couldn't add any regular pages into it.

HISTORY/BIBLE:  We read lesson #58 from Mystery of History on "Nebuchadnezzar II and the Hanging Gardens."  And placed our timeline figure on.

MATH:  We did a lesson from the book Math Adventures - Rocket to the Moon by Clemson (excellent series of math books).  This lesson also included great information on the Moon.  Also they played two Math logic games.  Also they played one online Math game to practice their facts.

AND now, as I type this they are watching a Discovery Channel documentary on the human body with Dad.

...one day at a time.

We had a very "hands-on" learning day today.  Not necessarily that I planned it that way, my kids just woke up in a very hands-on mood and thus learning seemed to naturally gravitate that way.  After some quick bookwork we....

...observed the beauty of snowflakes (we NEVER tire of that)

...periodically measured the new snowfall (at nightfall, we were up to 6"!)

...celebrated that our crocus baby had opened up so beautifully

...started a root vegetable tabletop garden

(we will be adding more vegetables when the BLIZZARD stops and allows us to go to the store!)

The idea came from Hearts and Trees Blog.

...planted bean and wheat seeds to observe sprouting

...started keeping a "Plant Journal" for our seeds

(I've attached the "plant journal" form that I made in my Files to Share section on the

right column of my blog in case you'd like it)

It's been an exhausting, but very fun-filled day!  I love doing things hands-on, as long as we can keep up with the messes!  It's so worth it.

I can't believe the amount of snow that is falling, it's crazy!  The last I heard by tomorrow afternoon, we could have over a foot of snow!!!!  You just never know in March.  I think we are officially "snowed-in."  Good thing there's plenty of milk in the fridge.  I'll post pictures of the snow tomorrow.