The Carrot Seed

The last book that Eli and I managed to do together this summer was The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss. It is a classic, simple story that led itself to many fun activities.

We did all kinds of activities and extensions with this book. It was easy to find ways to tie into the story. We started the week with the letter "c" by talking about fruits and vegetables that start with a "c"...like the carrot! We talked a lot about the differences between fruits and vegetables. From there, we focused on those that grow above the ground and those that grow below the ground. I immediately thought of the book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens. We hurried out to the library to read it too.

Mid-week, we made our way to the local Farmer's Market to check out all of the different fruits and vegetables in season now. Eli had fun naming all the foods, figuring out starting sounds, talking about whether it was a fruit or a veggie, and deciding if it grew above the ground or below. Of course, we had to make a few purchases too.

We were also able to work on patterning,

sorting,

and counting.

The color orange was another focus of the week. We explored how to make the color orange with red and yellow with this fun carrot craft:

It was a great book to end the summer with....so many fun things to do. Too bad our little science experiment didn't work. We tried to grow carrot leaves from the top of one of our carrots. Oh well. It was still fun to try. And as an added bonus, Eli definitely ate a lot of carrots throughout the week.

Now, we are back to the grind as school officially starts tomorrow. We had our orientation today, and Eli was just thrilled to be back with friends. He fell asleep in the car on the way home. Awesome!