HSV Garden Challenge / Garden themed Calendar pieces

Our weather here is still too brutal to be outdoors gardening yet.  Soccer has been cancelled for two weeks due to flooded fields and inclement weather conditions.  We even had a fire going in our wood burning stove today!  While it rained outside, the wood fire blazed inside to warm us all.  I decided to make some Garden themed calendar pieces after I took pictures of the vegetable sprouts Naters & my husband have started  from seed.

We have the above Calendar & Weather chart from Learning Resources.  If you'd like the Garden themed calendar pieces, leave a comment here on the blog or email and i will send them out to ASAP!
thanks for looking!
becky

Flower Garden Sensory Bin, Sensory Tub May 2011,

We are participating in the HSV Garden Challenge so this month I wanted to focus on gardening!  We live in Northern Ohio, people haven't started planting yet, but will within a couple of weeks.  Naters will have two Garden themed sensory tubs in May.  The first (the indoors one) is this one.  The second one (the outdoors one) she will get in a couple weeks. The theme of this one is FLOWER GARDEN!

Contents: 
Black beans is the base (reused from my October sensory tub)
6 flowers that i made with my hot glue gun, 1 & 3/4 green chenille stems, and foamies & felties flower bases that i decorated up --sandwiched the chenille stems in between flower layers so the ends of the cnille sticks are covered
4 mini garden tools (was thrilled i found these!)
3 wooden plant pots
2 silicone flower cups filled with assorted Butterfly & flowers beads & buttons
4 decorative wood pieces (sun, bees, rain cloud, blue sky w/white fluffy clouds)

I may show her how to fill the pots with bean and then put the flowers in them, but i'm going to hang back and see what she does on her own.  i have never directed or instructed her in anyway with her sensory tubs.
I'm curious to see how much she will play with this one. 

The scond sensory tub i'm going to give her later this month will be with real potting soil, seeds, peat pots, gardening tools including water can -- so this will be an outside only sensory tub!!

Thanks for looking!
becky

Nurturing Naters HSV Garden Challenge post #1

Hi we have decided to participate in the HSV Garden Challenge.  I was planning on a gardening sensory tub for the month of May.  Where we live, May is usually the month people start to plant their annuals.  Around Mothers Day is a time to start planting.  I will admit my husband is the outside guru.  He has a dedicated garden area, fruit tree, berry bushes, grape vines, and he also likes his flowers.  He started most of his plants from seed and has been tenderly caring for them in the house.  He does all the canning and the jelly making.  I wont take his credit because this is all him and Naters.  She loves being outside with him.  Naters loves to help in plant, weed, water and then pick the veggies & berries.  This year i hope he teaches her more about planting & caring for the plants and well as parts of the plant & flowers.  She defintely has a HUGE tomboy side to her....

The above pics are his garden and in the 2nd pic you can see a bit of the grapevines.
Thanks for looking!
becky