Botany

Homeschool Goal | Certified Pollinator Garden 🦋🐛🌼🐦🐝

home, Motherhood, Uncategorized

We’ve accomplished another one of our homeschool goals that I am SO happy to tell you about!!!

Our front flower garden has officially become a Certified Pollinator Habitat through the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden!!!!

We have put so much time, love, & money into this garden & I am SO proud of this accomplishment and honor! They sent us our yard sign, a packet on the best pollinators for Ohio, a packet of wildflower seeds, and a patch.

🌼 Welcome to Our *CERTIFIED* Pollinator Garden 🌼

Plant For Pollinators Garden Certified by the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden sign

Poppy

Zinnia

Blanket Flower

Purple Coneflower, Zinnia, Blanket Flower, Marigold, Phlox, Red Hot Pokers (in bloom)

Red Hot Pokers (no bloom)

Shasta Daisies

Zinnia

Blanket flower, coreopsis, Black Eyed Susan, Bellflower, Veronica Speedwell

Veronica Speedwell

Coreopsis

Crape Myrtel

Black Eyed Susans

Butterfly Bush, Black Eyed Susan

Lavender, Roses, Bellflower

Hyssop, Bellflower

Spiderwort, Milkweed, Shasta Daisy

Phlox, Bellflower

Poppy, Coneflower, Zinnia, Black Eyed Susan, Shasta Daisy

Bellflower

Blanket Flower

Black Eyed Susan, Shasta Daisy + Nectar Feeding Station

Zinnia

Marigold

Poppy

Golden Alexander

Hibiscus

Pollination in Action

The Golden Alexanders & Hibiscus are actually in our backyard, but they are still pollinators so I included them. The Hibiscus are especially fun to watch because the bees come out so fluffy when they are done. What a blessing from Mother Nature!!!

I have so many plans to expand our pollinator garden way further once we finish filling in these spaces completely first. We added a lot of these flowers this year and I’m really excited to see how much they grow next year as they become established. Some haven’t even begun flowering yet! I’m especially excited for those ones to come back next year, because the second year is always better.

This is only the beginning of our journey, & the first certification we have planned on our Homeschool Goal List. It’s so cool watching our goals come to life in front of our eyes though! I am teaching my children to not just talk about goals, but actually set out and accomplish them, no matter how long it takes. And how freaking amazing is it that we grew all of those beautiful flowers (and more)?!

Plus, it warms my heart that the kids enjoy creating beautiful bouquets for me & our home from our own garden. This one Sasha made is really, really cute. 💐

We are also currently propagating some more pollinators that we have picked up around town to add to our garden. It’s my secret way to add flowers for free 🤫. Always opt for picking a flower off the ground that has already fallen if possible, rather than picking directly from the plant.

My oldest son gifted me this amazing propagation station and it goes SO perfectly with our science wall.

Thanks to our pollinator garden, our kids have also developed a new hobby: trapping & releasing bees in their bug viewer (or hands, whatever). This is the most Sasha has collected at one time out of our garden:

We also found a mini hive they had started inside one of my watering cans. Unfortunately my children emptied it from the watering can so the bees abandoned it, but it made a super cool addition to our Nature Wall.

Because of this hobby, we will be adding bee hives along the side of our home for them so they can have a safe space to make their hives & honey without anyone interrupting their hard work.

I’m SO excited to add this to our mini homestead! That will be so cool! Hopefully we’ll soon be making our own honey! Luckily, we know some backyard bee keepers to turn to for guidance so that we can turn this new goal into a reality next 🐝.

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov

Botany 🌱

homeschool, Motherhood, Uncategorized

The weather has been so beautiful lately, we have been trying to do as much of our Botany classes outside as we can! We have put a ton of work into our back yard as a family, so it has been a really peaceful atmosphere to do our classes in.

Sati & Rocco decided that they wanted to take the class with us today as well.

The first thing we did today was learn the parts of a plant, and what each part is meant to do. For example, the stem sucks up the water for the plant and keeps it upright so that it can grow big & strong to support the weight of the plant. Sometimes a little man-made help is needed by using cages or trellises.

Then each girl picked a live plant with roots to examine & draw in their Botany workbooks. Mia worked with a Blueberry Bush that was purchased. Ella worked with a tomato plant that was propagated when a piece fell off of my tomato plants while planting.

When we were finished examining, drawing, & labeling our plants, the girls planted them. Ella added her to our tomato patch (and thought it was funny how small it was compared to the rest of them, *pictured below*) & Mia added hers along the fence next to my root vegetable garden.

Speaking of root vegetables, we also discussed them in our lesson today!

When we were finished we prepared our green bean seeds in a jar of water for next week’s lesson & checked back on our seeds from last week’s lesson in their ziploc bag “greenhouses.” The girls observed what has happened to the seeds over the last week, and what they think will happen over another week. Next week, we can check on our little pots from our Art, Play, Hike day & see how our wildflowers are doing also.

Botany has definitely been our favorite science unit so far!! It’s been so much fun to do as a whole family together & very hands on in every unit. I also love how many beautiful plants that we will get out of this unit! I’m excited to start incorporating some Botanical field trips into our classes also! We have a few fun ones picked out!

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov