My Not So Green Thumb

I have never been good at keeping plants alive.  In fact, I am always amazed at how quickly I manage to kill them. This is really sad because I really love plants and admire people who's yards are covered in beautiful greens, pinks, purples, and all those other colors that come from plants that they can get to bloom and actually keep alive for more than a week or two.

This being said, it is surprising that every year I still manage to talk myself into having my students plant flowers and paint pots for Mother's Day. 

I really wish I had taken pictures of Round 1. I thought it would be great to get plants that hadn't bloomed yet a week and a half before Mother's Day so the kids could have the experience of watering them and moving them into the shade/sun daily to watch them grow and bloom. Instead, most of their science logs that I told them to keep looked like this:

"Monday- my plant is about 4 inches high and has 10 leaves. It is green and it's leaves are soft."

"Tuesday-my plant doesn't look as good as yesterday. I think it is smaller and the leaves are not so green. They feel dry and it looks ugly." 

"Wednesday-I think my plant is dying. I watered it, but it's not drinking the water or something. I feel bad for my plant. I don't think any flowers are going to come."

"Thursday-I'm glad Mrs. Harris said she is bringing new plants because mine is dead. The leaves are all crispy and brown. It is 1 inch tall now. It shrunk. I'm going to throw it away tomorrow. My mom wouldn't like it."

This is not round 1, it is round 2. Unfortunately, round 1 did not live to Mother's Day, hence the round 2 flowers that were bought very begrudgingly. Notice I chose a flower this time with very thick stems and leaves and bought them at midnight on Thursday night so they wouldn't have time to die before we planted them Friday morning.

I always feel bad blurring my students' faces out, but rules are rules and I want to keep my job. No student's faces can be posted online. Here we are trying this again.

It's a messy job, but someone's got to do it. I asked a student if he knew how to use a camera so he could take this shot, and he looked at me like, "No duh!" Should have known. If only he were that competent at listening and following directions...

Here is a shot of the painted pots with their new flowers. I have a class picture with all their pots, but it would have been too much blurring. Anyway, although the kids were thrilled to get to plant flowers twice, next year we will be doing something different! I give up on trying to have a green thumb and I don't want to scar my students into thinking that they have the brown thumb curse too.