The Book Search

 Do you need a great new book for a read aloud?  What about one that has wonderful connections to gardening and growing things, vegetables, team work and becoming a part of a new community?  Then 'In our Garden" written by Pat Zietlow Miller and illustrated by Melissa Crowton is just the book you're looking for!  My new activity pack has Montessori language activities with vegetable three part cards and a compound word train with words from the story. There are also comprehension activities-there's a cause and effect printable and a printable retelling frame.  There are science activities and math activities, there's so much there!  Click on the book cover and it will take you to Teachers Pay Teachers page!  

Living in South Florida certainly has it's perks.  While many of our northern family and friends have struggled through a record setting winter, winter in South Florida tends to be pretty consistent.  It's warm and sunny and fairly dry.  In fact, our winter has been much warmer than usual (not to brag) and we're running our air conditioning at a time when most people are running their heat. Someone told me the other day that they really missed living where there are seasons and I thought that was sort of funny because we DO have seasons in South Florida, but they are more subtle than seasons in more northern climates.  We don't get dramatic leaf turning displays or snow storms, but I always notice spring in South Florida, maybe even more than some of our other seasons.  Suddenly, the days are longer.  It's not dark at 5 any more, now it's still light at 6:30.  The mockingbirds are out and reminding everyone that they are here and why don't we notice ...

We have been waging a losing battle with the weeds in our backyard. We live in South Florida and our yard is too small for a pool (we have power lines on our backyard line and regulations require that a pool be at least ten feet from the power lines so you don't electrocute yourself cleaning the pool. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me!) and while I like the look of grass, I apparently have not been offering the grass what it wants because the weeds have proliferated and the grass... not so much. We also had a problem with the rain running off the patio roof killing some of the grass. So my husband said, "Why don't we just pull up all the grass and plant bigger plants?" Ok, that seems like a good idea. So we drew some pictures of what we had in mind and laid out our garden hoses so that we could see what a path would look like and my vision was that we would start on this during our winter break (when it isn't 90+ degrees with a million percent humidity)...