This was the area in my yard which housed the strawberry plants. I think I should have just called them plants, because they never actually produced strawberries. It’s a fairly sunny spot, but just not sunny enough for berries. On Friday I dug up all of the strawberry plants to make room for something new.
I moved the berries to the pots in the wagon. Since they are on wheels, I can roll the strawberries out to a sunny spot on warm days. Then, the kids and I planted our strawberry pots with the left over plants.
Once all of the berries were out, we were ready for lettuce. My kids love the instant gratification of planting vegetable starts. We also plant lettuce from seed in a different garden. The kids are always amazed at the process of seeds becoming plants.
After planting our lettuce and moving our berries, we pulled out a few of our gardening books. I’m always amazed at the conversations I have with my kids after they have had a real-life experience related to the topic they are reading about. We learned about how seeds germinate, things plants need to grow, and made connections to the tasks we had just completed in the garden.
I love to use a combination of fiction and non-fiction in thematic literature study. Personally, I connect to non-fiction best, as does my son. My daughter, on the other hand, loves to tell stories and listen to fiction. She was so excited to read The Curious Garden because it was a book her library teacher had read at school.
Do you connect life experiences to literacy? Do your kids get excited when they see that their lives are like the lives of the characters in books? Every experience we have is an experience in our literacy lives. It’s all connected. Who knew we’d be learning through lettuce???
Happy reading!
I’m linking up at Fertilizer Friday.
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