Growing Tomatoes - Finding the Mysterious Worm

Just about everyone is growing tomatoes as well as other things these days! Turn it into conversation pieces. 

You and your children can have a blast looking for the flowers and talk about how the bees and other insects pollenate the flowers so they will produce fruit. Also, this is how all fruit start out. 

We have one plant making tons of little fruit! We go on a hunt to find all the growing fruit and look at the different colors. It's really exciting to watch the kids realize the food is growing and changing. Patience is hard for young ones, and adults sometimes, too! 

Watch as they turn from green to yellow to orange to red! 

It's fun to find the hidden fruit on the plants. 

We also talk about the size and look for ones that are smaller, bigger, smallest, largest. It is really neat to help them find ones of the same size (matching). 

Another opportunity for giving your child vocabulary is providing them with the words stalk, base, leaves, shoots, etc. 

Now, we have a mysterious worm. (I got one last week and now there seems to be another one!! yuck!) I'm still on the hunt for this one!  

 We discuss the different ways we can tell we have a worm. Some of the fruit has been eaten, holes in the leaves where is has been eaten away and......

worm poop (fun to give them the word scat also for poop). Be honest with yourself....it's fun to talk about poop! 

Each day we water our plants together. 

Once a week we fertilize our plants and talk about how it is helpful to the plants and harmful to us.