Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Our New Adventure

We are starting a unit study on Texas Wildflowers! We began by planting the seeds you see above after soaking them overnight in liquefied seaweed which the nice lady at the gardening center told me would help with germination. (FYI: liquid seaweed... thick, brown, & smelly.) My daughters were thrilled (flowers!), my sons were excited (dirt!) and my house smelled like Galveston, TX (gag!) all morning!

We are using a native wildflower mix of seeds that I had hoped to study a bit first before planting, but we are a little late although the online resources I have found say early spring is still a good time to seed. I also inadvertently threw away the seed packet which listed the variety of flowers we hope to see (whoops!) but the garden center had a few more that I can pick up when we are out and about.

Here are some of the books we will be reading: I also have plans to create a notebook, make a checklist of the ones we want to try to see, do some flower pressing, a few crafts and a lot of nature walks with the camera to capture all the little lovelies we see. Since this is our first official unit study, I would appreciate any other ideas or suggestions!

8 comments:

  1. Matilda, this is a great idea!! I may have to "glean" it and start a New England study up here this spring. Keep us posted! :)

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  2. What a wonderful adventure! Can't wait to see the progress!

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  3. Ooooh, maybe a trip to Fredricksburg or the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center:
    http://www.wildflower.org/

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  4. Yes, Jennifer! I have been using them as an online resource, but I completely forgot that they have the center, too. If we plan a trip to visit my mom in SA we could easily stop in Austin. Fredericksburg should be beautiful! I would love to show the kids the hill country!

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  5. Wildseed Farms is in Fredericksburg (www.wildseedfarms.com). We drove by it on the way to the WWII museum in Fredericksburg. It's on my field trip list.

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  6. I can not adequatly express my love for Texas wildflowers! What fun!!! I've been finding them all around my house, and they change all throughout March, April, and May! I'm hoping to make it to the wildflower center sometime soon...and I think we'll go to the bluebonnet festival in Brenham. Can't wait to see what you do with this!

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  7. I was also going to suggest the Wildflower Center since you are in TX. We've never been but I'm aware of it from the book, Miss Lady Bird’s Wildflowers: How a First Lady Changed America. It's great picture book story of her beautification of America in the 1960-70s. My dad worked for the Department of Interior at the time and they were heavily involved in projects related to this beautification and litter cleanup campaign. I remember my dad talking about Ladybird and wondering just what this female bird was. (Not very politically savvy at age 6). I'm going to list a few ideas for the rabbit trail on the 4 Real boards where you asked about nature notebooks. This is a great rabbit trail and I think we'll hop along and join you - though we have to wait a few more months here in Colorado for anything to be growing.

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  8. The wildflowers are one of the things I miss most about Texas. I haven't seen a bluebonnet since I moved to MA in 2000. I never seem to visit at the right time.

    I love The Legend of the Bluebonnet. One of my favorite books growing up.

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts and yourself!