Games, Gardening, and Grains - Blogging from A to Z Challenge

This year for the Blogging from A to Z challenge, I'm focusing on going through my homeschooling files that I've created from the time that Sophia and Olivia were in preschool.

Some of the files are still relevant while others I will be decluttering and recycling in the process. Each day during April, I will pick one of the files to focus on - either doing a hands-on activity or sharing some information from one of the files.

For the seventh day - Letter G - I am focusing on Games, Gardening, and Grains.

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Games

Found an idea for a winter game that sounded like it would be fun for the kids at a winter 4-H meeting: an ice hunt.

Use water and food coloring to make at least a dozen colored ice cubes.

Source

Hide them in the snow and then let everybody go out with plastic bags to find them before the ice melts or the players freeze.

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Gardening

8 Ways to Pinch Pennies When Gardening:
- Dig suckers from lilacs, forsythia, shrub roses, and other multiple-stemmed plants and transplant them to new homes.
- Trees and shrubs cost less at garden centers than nurseries. Selection is limited, and plants may not be as nicely shaped or as big, but the savings may get you three or four plants instead of just one.
- Look for free or chap plants on craigslist.com or freecycle.com.
- Scour the bulletin boards at supermarkets and post your own notice for "Free Plants Wanted."
- Bare-root shrubs are a bargain. Look for bramble fruit, forsythia, hedge plants, and roses in bags rather than pots.
- Shop end-of-season sales to save a bundle.
- Scout the "sad sack" section of your nursery and garden center for damaged but salvageable plants at cut-rate prices.
- Treasure every bird-planted tree seedling you find in your yard; transplant while still small.

Plants for Attracting Beneficial Insects:
- Alyssum (not edible)
- Bachelor Button
- Borage

A bee on Borage.

Source

- Cosmos (not edible)
- Dill
- Echinacea
- Fennel
- Monarda/Bee Balm
- Rudbeckia (not edible)
- Yarrow (not edible)

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Grains

- Grains are the seeds or fruits of grasses.

- The three most widely-used grains in the U.S. are wheat, corn, and rice.

This was one of the fields that was by an

Amish farm near Cashton, Wisconsin. 

(Taken on July 19, 2010.)

- The kind of grain used when making bread largely determines its flavor, texture, and nutrition.

- Wheat, rye, oats, and barley were the primary grains in Europe during the Middle Ages.

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In the process of going through the files that began with "G," I recycled 1 more bag of photocopies and clippings. That brings the total up now to 9 bags of papers that have been recycled.