Back in April, Pumpkin was finishing the 3rd unit in our concept about our environment. (Moving Beyond the Page 5-7) Within this concept she had learned about the environment with a focus on homes & habitats, weather, and our community.
At this age level, our curriculum does not have a test at the end of unit, rather it has a final project. In this final project, the child does some sort of project or report or something creative that shows exactly what they learned. You can see how I map out our school year in my post about how to organize your homeschooling year.
For our community final project, her job was to do something to make her community environment better. Pumpkin came up with a number of good ideas. Some of which I had no idea how to implement. In the end, we chose something that she liked and was relatively simple for us to implement.
Pumpkin decided that our little flower bed in our front yard needed some flowers. We have a number of people who walk around our neighborhood, she felt that by adding some flowers to our front yard, it would make the community a prettier and better place. Even the post person, UPS driver and Fed Ex drivers would benefit among other members of the community of which she thought.
Above, you can see our starting point. Our sad flower empty flower bed. A trip to Lowe’s for flowers was a part of the project. Pumpkin chose two types of flowers. I figured since the Lilies were guaranteed to grow we couldn’t go wrong. The seeds were very inexpensive. We planed to try to get them to grow since Pumpkin wanted them very badly(she will be a Daisy Girl Scout in the fall and has been counting down, so the flowers go along with the countdown). In case you can’t tell, I stink with plants. Unless I can plant it and it lives with the rainfall we get, it doesn’t stand a chance in my yard. I definitely crossed my fingers and hoped the guaranteed to grow would grow for my sweet Pumpkin.
First we measured our spacing for the bulbs. In between we planned to use our daisy seeds. Next, it was time to dig and dig. There are quite a few roots from our many trees. It always makes it fun to plant things.
Lilies, guaranteed to grow and they already are before we even plant them! Yay!
After planting all the bulbs, we planted the daisy seeds (none of them ever grew). We gave our new plants a layer of leaf mulch and of course, Pumpkin watered her new plants. Then the waiting began. Who knew that Lilies take so long to grow and bloom (not me as you can tell).
Finally we see a shoot coming out of the ground! Yay! Pumpkin checked on her plants very often and was excited to see them each coming out of the ground and growing.
Still growing!
After 3 months of waiting and watching her plants grow, we finally got one that bloomed! My sweet Pumpkin was very excited.
After a couple more weeks, we had 4 beautiful Lilies that bloomed. I think we planted 5, so one didn’t grow. Now I’m hoping they will come up again next year. However, I must have some kind of problem with my soil because most anything I plant blooms the first year and either looks fine but never blooms again or it dies. I hope for Pumpkin’s sake that theses bulbs are able to survive so she can see them bloom again next year and remember her community project.
What a beautiful Lily!! How very exciting to see it come up and bloom.
Thank you! It has been quite exciting, especially to my little girl.
Those are beautiful! I’m so glad they grew for your sweet Pumpkin. I don’t have a ‘green’ thumb either. I love this final project!
Thank you so much! I’m so glad they grew for her, too.
What a wonderful project! She had a GREAT idea! I hope they bloom again for her too! And perhaps she can add to it next year?
Thanks so much! I hope they bloom for her again as well. Good idea to add more next year.
Those are absolutely beautiful! That’s so fun that you got pictures during the growing stages too! What a fun activity! New follower here. Hooray for being blog friends! 🙂