Sorry, those of you hopeful that the title had a misspelling and that this post would include chocolate will be disappointed. I recently had a class on creating a desert terrarium with my homeschool group co-op.
How many of you can say you’ve mail ordered a box of cacti?
Nothing like having a bunch of kids over and setting them loose with plants that can impale. First, because we have to make this educational, we talked a bit about deserts and compared rainfall between our city and Death Valley by using a dropper and adding drops for each inch of average rainfall onto small squares of paper towel. The kids were able to easily see how much more water we get with our 39 inches than Death Valley with its two inches. Then we compared our cacti to the plants around here and discussed the reasons for the adaptation of thick stems and spines rather than thin stems and leaves.
Why yes, sparkly dresses and red hats ARE required attire for our co-op
Then all of the kids added potting soil designed especially for cactus to the containers they brought and they took turns picking out a couple of cacti.
I also ordered a couple of toobs of plastic desert life for decoration.
Planting cactus can be challenging.
After they had planted their cactus they put a layer of sand over the top to make it look authentic.
Don’t they all look great?
