If you are considering being a Garden Parent, read on to see how the PACT school integrates science, mathematics, reading, curiosity, imagination, and nutrition into your child's education.
We talked about some ideas going forward, which we can discuss when the garden committee meets. One of the main things we'd both like for her class is planting some edible vegetables.
Any clues on where these came from? We didn't notice any when digging in the compost a couple of weeks ago.
Also, I noticed that the irrigation seems to only water close to the outlet, and the rest of the bed stays dry, so we will need to keep watering the beds after things are planted.
So...for our class lesson:
We did a change of curriculum and dug up cutworms and looked at them. We also did get time to plant lettuce, celery, lavender and violas. The seeds will have to wait until next week. We talked about cutworms, earthworms and the types of plants we planted. I had them draw the plant they planted, with varying success - most of them drew their plant, a few of them didn't get anything drawn. We smelled the plants, and looked at what we could see in the garden.
But really, they were focused on the cutworms, so we didn't get much else discussed.
The Lester's family wrote:
Hey! I did some quick searching on cutworms after the discovery today and found:
The term cutworm is used for the larvae of many species of moth. Most cutworms are in the moth family Noctuidae, however, not all noctuid larvae are cutworms. Cutworms are notorious agricultural and garden pests. They are voracious leaf, bud, and stem feeders and can destroy entire plants. They get their name from their habit of "cutting" off a seedling at ground level by chewing through the stem. Some species are subterranean and eat roots. Cutworms are usually green, brown, or yellow soft-bodied caterpillars, often with longitudinal stripes, up to one inch in length. There are many variations across the genera.
Control
While there are pesticides which can control these insects, the non-industrial gardener can protect threatened plants (most often tomato, pepper, pea, or bean) by simply impeding the ground-hiding cutworm caterpillar from climbing the plant; they hide in the soil near the plants and climb them at night.
To prevent this, one can:
- Place a "cutworm ring" around the plant. It can be a can with both ends cut off, or anything similar, even a ring made of cardboard. It should be at least four inches high above the soil and go one inch below the surface. Some even use five gallon buckets with the bottom cut out, planting the seedling and bucket at the same time.
- Wrap the stem of the plant in aluminum foil, wax paper, cardboard, or plastic.
- Strangely enough, yet reputedly as reliable as anything: simply brace both sides of the stem with popsicle sticks, toothpicks, or even sticks from the yard. If they run smoothly up the side of the plant several inches, this apparently stops the cutworm from "wrapping itself around" the plant, necessary for its evolved method of cutting it off.
Shruti and Katie found autumn leaves and explained to me why there are autumn leaves. Aili found an ant and watched it with the magnifying glass. She wanted to know why sweet peas need a trellis to climb so we talked about the type of stems they have. The seeds for microgreens were interesting – only 6 kids got to look at them this week – they described them as looking like popcorn, or granola. Reynaldo looked at the new mulch that was put down. William told me how plants attract butterflies – pretty flowers and scent. We smelled the lime geranium and he rubbed the leaf on his observation page under the "I smelled…" section. Duane made sure he filled in all the sections on the 5 senses.
We had each group choose an animal/insect/ bird they might see in the garden and pretend to be it on the way to and from the classroom. We pretended to be bees.
Every student selects one plant and writes their name on a marker and places it next to the plant. Measure the plant using a 12 inch ruler. Write down the measurement. Some of the students used magnifying glasses to look at their plants. Duane and Shruti also measured the garden bed and plotted it on a grid.
Daniel brought worms he had dug up at lunch time. We showed the kids how to measure the size of the plants, and talked to some of them about “half inches”. Johanna found some ants by the sweet peas. Some of the kids chose the plant they had planted to measure. Others chose the biggest one. There was one cloud in the sky – a long one of “mares tails”. Morten thought it looked like a bridge. Madeleine thought it looked like a centipede. Today we were bees and butterflies going to and from the classroom.
Show them the plants that have come up and how they are too thick and need thinning – we don’t want to plant that close together. Leave some planted close so they will see how they don ‘t develop as well. They may taste the thinned radish sprouts if they want.
This class went really well – almost all the kids stayed engaged the entire lesson. Last week they were disappointed we didn’t have anything for them to taste, so this week we made sure we had apples – not very exotic but it lets us look at the seeds and/or talk about where they grow. Most of them thought the radish sprouts were too spicy. It was fun cutting out pictures of food the worms eat, although we had a bit of a problem with the wind so we had to sit near the classroom instead of under the trees. Ethan told us that his Dad eats worms for breakfast, but we will grow so many worms that everyone can have them for breakfast if they want to. However Shruti said she hates how worms taste, so I guess we don’t need to save any for her. Dylan thought the worms would need water, so we talked about how they don’t have noses so breathe through their skin, and need wet skin to be able to breathe. The boys especially had a blast tearing up newspaper for the worms.
This week they were much more careful when they planted seeds to spread them out instead of dumping them into the furrow in clumps. Kimmi was disappointed that her plant hadn’t grown taller since last week, so we talked about how flower plants often grow more slowly than vegetable plants. We cut open a pea seed so they could see the different parts.
On the way to and from the garden the kids pretended to be bees, bears and kangaroos.
Remove some red wrigglers from container. Explain they are not the large earthworms that are found in the garden, but small red ones that are found under leaf litter etc. They can observe the worms in their hands. But remember worms need damp skin to breathe, otherwise they will die. But if they are covered in water they will drown. After they have looked at them they should peel the newspaper back and put the worms into the bottom of the worm box. Discuss what we can feed our worms. Feed them the apple peels.
We actually had too much planned for today’s lesson, which we knew beforehand. We did get through all the activities but didn’t have as much time for discussion/observat ion as we would have liked. The dynamics of the groups are interesting – when one or two children said very loudly that they wanted to hold worms, then everyone wanted to hold them. In another group the kids started saying “yuck” and then only one or two kids initially wanted to hold them.
We had one group where all 6 kids were excited about tasting coconut milk, and one group where only 2 tasted it, as 1 or 2 kids started saying they didn’t want to try any.
Everyone ate apples though, and Shruti declared very loudly that she LOVES apples. Someone asked if they were Indian apples, and Shruti agreed they were, but at the end all the kids decided that Indian apples taste just like American apples. Everyone took a turn with the apple peeler/corer and looked at how it works. Katie told us her grandmother has an apple peeler/corer like the one we used.
Breaking open the coconut was exciting and every child in the first 2 groups wanted to take a turn with the hammer (don’t worry – John’s hand was firmly on the handle!). Dylan was the one in the first group who made the first crack in the shell. In the last group I think it was only the boys who wanted to try.
On the way to and from class we pretended to be bees, butterflies and elephants. Bees seem to be a favorite every week. We have a new child in the class – Ashley – she chose for the group to be butterflies.
Aiko brought pomegranates. Have the kids guess how many seeds might be in them. Open one, segment it into 6 and have the kids separate the seeds into a bowl.
Today there was great excitement over being able to harvest lettuces from our garden. I thought beforehand that maybe the kids who had selected that lettuce as theirs would not want it harvested, but they definitely did! We measured the lettuces to decide which was the largest one to harvest first. Everyone had a turn at using the salad spinner – they really like using any kind of tools/implements to do with the garden or the plants. Everyone got to push the spinner 5 times, and we counted in English and Spanish. A lot of kids snuck in a sixth push!
After washing the lettuces we guessed how many seeds there would be in a pomegranate. The guesses ranged from 1 to 1000. Several kids thought there would be 6 seeds. How many are there? We cut the pomegranates into 6 segments, one for each kid, and counted the 6 segments. Then Ethan decided to count the segments by twos, so then we also counted them by threes. We didn't have time to count the seeds, but probably several hundred in each one (according to Wikipedia the average number is 612, but some can contain more than 1000 – there's a piece of trivia I bet you'll never use). The kids scooped the seeds out, tasted them, and saved them for the salad. The first group discovered by accident that if you squeeze a pomegranate seed juice squirts everywhere. Then there were several more "accidents"! (In case anyone wondered why Kimmy and Duane looked like they had chickenpox) . Someone asked me where pomegranates come from – I told them that originally they were from Iran and Afghanistan , but now they are grown in many countries. Shruti told me they have them in India and her grandmother knows the Sanskrit name for them.
The kids each also got to choose anything they wanted from the garden to include in their salad. I think we had some of almost everything – microgreens, celery, radish sprouts, geranium, and violas. Katie was concerned that she didn't have anywhere to dry her hands after washing them, so John suggested she dry them on his jeans, - she promptly when back to the faucet and got her hands REALLY wet so she could dry them again.
We set the table with the 3 different salads, salad dressing and plates and forks, and Ms Bonnie gave the kids a lesson in table etiquette – they all had to walk slowly to the table, then sit down at their place and wait quietly until everyone was seated. Then they had to say "please" and "thank you" to the servers. We asked each child if they would like some salad and some salad dressing. Almost everyone wanted some of both, and many children had seconds and thirds of the salad and dressing – there wasn't any left at the end. Katie asked me if I had napkins – unfortunately I had forgotten! Maybe another time we will do a "formal meal" with napkins. Katie was so polite – when she was done she said "Thank you for the salad – it was delicious", so I thanked her for growing and harvesting the plants. When they were finished they had to ask an adult if they could be excused, and were then allowed to go and play on the grass.
Shruti had brought oranges to share – I thought they would go well in the salad, but I was soundly voted down, and we ate the oranges while we were in the garden. The oranges were very popular, with the kids clamoring for more.
Kimmy wanted to feed the worms, but I said we didn't have time today but maybe next week – Ethan was upset that he wouldn't be there next week and would miss feeding the worms, but I assured them there would be many more opportunities to feed the worms. Actually the worms are not eating well right now – they got too wet in the rain on Monday, so we had to make some modifications to the box – hopefully they will be happy and eating again soon.
On the way to and from the garden we pretended to be lions, kangaroos, roly-polies, kitty-cats and the ever-popular bees.
Postscript on behaviour in the garden – the kids are doing really well – we had the first few weeks getting them used to us (and vice versa), but now we can let them be rowdy and excited at times, but they will settle right down and listen and follow instructions when we ask them to, and almost everyone is very involved in everything we do.
Lettuce and Pomegranate Salad
Salad ingredients:
Lettuce and other greens from the garden
One of: Sliced strawberries, clementines, apples or pears
Pomegranate seeds
[Feta cheese crumbled (optional)]
[toasted almonds or pecans if there are no nut allergies]
Poppy Seed Dressing:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup vinegar (balsamic or red wine or black raspberry)
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped onion
[1/4 teaspoon paprika]
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
[1 tablespoon raspberry jam]
Process first 5 ingredients for 30 seconds in a blender. With blender running, pour oil through food chute in a slow, steady stream, and process until smooth. Stir in poppy seeds. Keeps for weeks in the fridge.
Mix lettuce with dressing. Decorate salad with other ingredients.
After we put the flowers in the phone book for pressing the first group of kids got to plant carrot and pansy seeds where we had harvested the lettuces. We did not get the borage planted, but we should have about 500 pansy plants! They also dug some weeds out of the corner of the garden where we want to plant flowers next week.
We fed the worms the lunch scraps! The worms are happier now – it looks like their bedding is the right degree of dampness. Ashley and I even found a worm egg. All the other kids had left the worm bin when we found the egg, but we will look again next week to see if we can find any. Instead of planting seeds, the second group dug in an empty garden plot looking for cutworms. They found quite a lot. Fortunately we are not finding any more in our garden – the kids did a good job of getting them out at the beginning of the year. We also found an earthworm when we were digging up weeds.
Everyone also got to measure their plants – most kids are pretty fast at doing that by now, although some still need reminding that the end of the ruler with the 1 goes down. We introduced a new measure today – temperature. We put a thermometer on the wall in the garden. We did not have time to discuss temperature measurements other than briefly pointing it out, and doing some 1:1 with a few kids. However we will spend some time on that in the next few classes.
After the time in the garden (which we got through a little faster due to only having 2 groups) the kids wrote/drew in their garden journals, and we finished off the day with a "Fiesta". We ate the pumpkin bread that the kids made in their cooking class, plus the salad that was made from the garden harvest yesterday.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
William told us that rainbows are formed when the sunlight shines through raindrops. Daniel told us he has seen a totally white rainbow – so we talked about white light being split into all the colors that make the rainbow – I'm not sure if anyone got that! Duane told us that red is the hottest color of the rainbow – we didn't attempt to go into the physics of that! Stefan suggested we could make a rainbow by turning the hose on and spraying it. We would have done that if it was summer, but it was somewhat chilly in the garden today – some of the kids were cold.
After talking about the rainbow we made maps of the garden we were going to plant. The kids had graph paper with a schematic of the 2 fence posts and the planting trench. There were seven grid squares between the fence posts, and the kids colored each square the corresponding color of the bulbs we planned to plant there. Shruti, Madeleine and William started writing the names of the colors, but they found they ran out of space. William, with his ever-keen eye for detail, noticed that the 2 blue crayons he had been given were not really different, and that he couldn't make the blue, indigo, violet part of his rainbow properly, and that someone else had put 2 of the blue/purple colors around the wrong way. This was a cause for great concern for him!
Duane wrote his name next to the rainbow in the corresponding rainbow colors. Each child chose a bag of 2 bulbs with a color coded label and decided where it should be planted according to the color scheme. They planted the bulb right side up and covered it up with dirt. After garden class Kimmy ran back to class and was very excited to tell Ms Bonnie that they planted lightbulbs!
We had an inchworm that Duane had found at home for the kids to look at – most of them couldn't see it – it was disguised as a stick. William told us they do that so that birds won't eat them. We told them inchworms have 6 legs at the front and 4 at the back, so Brian was able to tell us they have a total of 10 legs.
As usual, the eating part was a big hit – we had tiny little apples I got at Safeway – Safeway called them crabapples, but they were very tasty. Each of the kids got one apple, and we looked at the star inside and counted the seeds in English and in Spanish.
Today we got to start on our garden alphabet. Each week we plan to add at least 1 word per group to the chart, describing something they have seen or done in the garden. Today the kids chose apple, banana, carrot, lavender, lettuce and yellow.
On the way to and from the garden we pretended to be kitty cats, dinosaurs, lions, bees, butterflies and flies. (The kids did collect scraps for the worms at lunchtime, but we didn't have time to feed them during class. I fed them in sector B of the bin after school)
The inchworm cocoon was a big hit, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the pictures in the book of the lifecycle, as everyone was pretty interested in that. The first group of kids planted one more bulb each – they are tulip bulbs which had been chilling in the refrigerator for the last 6 weeks. Shruti thought the dirt looked dirty! Duane wrote in his kid writing garden journal that “we planted more boobs”. Ethan found a worm when he was planting his bulb so he transferred it to our garden after he showed the others.
It turned out to be too challenging to have the kids from groups 2 and 3 do the staking and collar, so we just talked about that instead. We spent some time looking at what has changed in the garden, identifying the plants and talking about whether they are ready to pick. We talked about the trellis for staking peas. We also noticed the geranium had been badly frosted, but was still alive. Stefan suggested if we would put a roof over the garden then that wouldn’t happen. We noticed that many of the bulbs are sprouting. Some of the kids also did some weeding of the walkways.
The Easter Egg radishes were ready to harvest, so each child got to harvest one. We compared the sizes and colors of them – they came in pink, purple, red and white. Some of the kids chose to eat theirs then, and some of them took them home. Some of the kids were disappointed that their radishes were smaller, so we talked about how they need space to grow, and how important it is to try to separate the seeds when we plant them, because the radishes that were not crowded grew much bigger. The upside is that smaller radishes are less spicy!
We added quite a lot of words to our garden alphabet today, including all the colors of the rainbow.
On the way to and from the garden we pretended to be elephants, cheetahs, T rex, and tigers. Rowdy elephants, cheetahs, T rex and tigers!! In addition to choosing an animal to be, we now have the kids tell us something about the animal. I think Ethan chose cheetahs because someone else had previously chosen elephants, and “cheetahs eat elephants”
On the way to and from the garden we pretended to be butterflies, elephants and T.rex. The kids told us that butterflies have wings, some butterflies are called Monarchs, and T.rex was a meat eating dinosaur. They told us that elephants have big feet, long trunks and big ears, and live in Africa. Brian clarified that the elephants that live in India have very small ears.
We talked about handspans and compared the sizes of our handspans with each other. The kids wrote their name and date on their worksheets – almost everyone managed to do that – some needed help with the date, others knew today's date and could write it themselves. The class has been working on dates and how to write them in the classroom. Then they outlined their handspan on their paper and looked at the size of it – then they went on a search for something in the garden that was the same size as their handspan. The things they found included different plants, the top of the watering can, a clay pot, and a stick in the mulch.
William was the one who had the idea to find a stick the length of his handspan – he was very careful to keep searching until he found a stick that was exactly the width of the handspan he had drawn. Morten has become very attached to his lavender plant, and always checks on it. He found that it was the same width as his handspan. He was also excited to notice that the "en" in lavender was the same as the "en" in Morten. Most of the kids were able to record what they found on their worksheet, either by drawing a picture of it or writing its name. Interestingly, most of them preferred to write rather than draw what they found.
After that they measured the length or width of our garden bed using handspans, and recorded their results. Duane and Madeleine found that their handspans did not fit neatly into the length, so we showed them how to write ½. The kids have come a long, long way since the last time we did worksheets a couple of months ago.
Shruti wanted to know why we never grow tomatoes. Ethan was able to tell the group that tomatoes are a summer crop. So we went and examined the frosted geranium again, and talked about how that would happen to the tomato plants if we planted them in the winter.
Daniel wanted to check on the bulbs we had planted. We saw that the paperwhites are flowering already. They were planted in the "green" section of the rainbow because they have green leaves J and because I wanted an early flowering bulb so the kids would have some flowers to see.
After the measuring it was time to harvest. Each of the kids got to harvest one or two of the microgreens that have grown really large. William noticed that one of his was beginning to flower, so we looked at how the stems grow long between the leaves when the greens start flowering, and why we like to pick them before they flower. Then they took them back to the classroom where Aiko helped them steam and dress the greens. They also made sushi (rice wrapped in seaweed) and noodles with greens. Madeleine didn't like how the rice made her hands feel soapy.
Ms Bonnie read a story to them about a little boy who was sad when all the kids laughed at him because he brought sushi to school. But eventually the other kids realized that sushi tasted good too. Our kids are learning to taste different things that they grow in the garden, or that their classmates from different cultures bring in. We finished up the day by sitting down to a meal of noodles, sushi and greens. Yum! Thanks Aiko for preparing and organizing the food.
First of all we discussed why we couldn't go to the garden – it had rained. How much rain did we have? Answers 1, 10, 100million drops. Of course it was Daniel who guessed 100million. How do we measure rainfall – we can measure how many inches of rain fell using a rain gauge. We looked at the rain gauge – it was a little confusing, because there was 0.5 inches of water in the gauge. We discussed how that was the same as half an inch, but that was a little complex for most of the kids. Also, that little bit of rain in the gauge didn't look much to the kids, but I tried to explain that there would be a layer of water that thick all over the concrete and ground, if it hadn't soaked in or run off.
Then we took out our flowers and leaves that we had pressed in the fall and each of the kids decorated a card, and some of them decorated bookmarks. Madeleine made a girl on the card out of her flowers. Morten also made a person. Kimmy formed the letters F-U-N with her flower petals. Ethan, Duane and Shruti got through with theirs quickly and had time to write a journal page. Shruti asked if she could write a question on hers. She wrote "Can we make a man out of leafs (leaves)?". Ethan wrote "I am foling (folding) paper". Duane drew John, me and himself.
Today we planted 2 different things. One group of kids planted strawberry plants in our garden bed. The other 2 groups of kids planted daffodil bulbs in the planters around the blacktop to help to beautify our school. All the kids remembered by now how to plant bulbs – which side should go up. However Diana and Lizbeth still cannot bring themselves to put their hands in the soil to cover up the bulbs! We found that some of the planters had loads of worms in them. The kids who planted strawberries also found a few worms in our garden bed.
We looked at kiwifruit and guessed what type of seeds they might have. The guesses ranged from 5 (Stefan) to "many more than 100" (William) to 972 (Shruti) Then we cut a slice for each of the kids, and they counted the seeds in their slice. On the top of each slice there was about 13-20 seeds. Being the 100th day of school I thought it would be appropriate if kiwifruit had 100 seeds, but I guess William was probably right.
Today was pretty low key – we did the tasting and planting, and they walked around the garden observing things that had changed. We noticed that the ivy had been trimmed back. We saw the new "Tumbleweed" composter, and the kids got to add their kiwifruit peels to it and turn it over. There was great pride attached to being strong enough to turn it over without an adult's help! They all lined up to have a second turn spinning it, but alas….we had to go plant bulbs! One group wanted to feed the kiwi peels to the worms, so we did that.
We looked through the worm bin, and found 2 baby worms, about as long as the width of our thumbs. They are almost see-through. We also found one worm coccoon. Shruti noticed that not all the worms had an clitellum (which is where the coccoon is formed), so she decided, obviously, that the ones that did were girls and the ones that didn't were boys. I will leave it up to Priya to decide whether she should explain to her that worms are hermaphrodites!
We also saw that there was a new worm bin, much larger than ours, that all the other classes are sharing. We noticed that some of our bulbs are getting close to having flowers, maybe next garden class the flowers will be out. Ethan saw that there was a small amount of water in our rain gauge. We looked at the thermometer and counted in 2's between 50 and 60 to work out it was 56F. We discussed what 56F feels like – do you need a sweater or not – we agreed that it's an in between temperature, and some people wear sweaters at that temperature and some don't. Then we asked what we would have to wear if it was 20F. Duane was able to tell us that was below freezing, so we'd need lots of sweaters.
When we went on our "mini field trip" to the blacktop I asked William to be at the head of the line for his group to follow. He asked why I wanted him to be – I think he thought it was being punished for something! John was teasing Aili – he would put his head behind Reagan's and talk to her as if he was Reagan. "Hi Aili, I like my big brother, Do you like your little sister?" She would say "Is that really Reagan talking?"
Three pots stood out as being different – Ethan painted jedis on his, Morten painted a train, and Daniel very carefully covered every part of his pot in monochromatic green. The group of Shruti, Dylan, Kimmy, Dennis, Duane and Ethan sang while they painted, to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it” … “It’s fun to mix the colors when you’re painting, it’s fun to mix the colors when you’re painting…” The kids were very polite – they needed to share the paints and the paintbrushes, and they did that very well. They were also careful not to get paint on each other or other people’s pots. I THINK we managed to keep all the clothing clean!
The painting took up the full session for most of the kids. Some of the kids who finished earlier got to do a variety of other things – they helped John with removing weeds from the walkways, looked for cutworms and worms in an empty garden bed, checked on our bulb rainbow garden, and turned the composter to get oxygen into it.
I have taken the pots home to dry, and sometime later in the year when the weather is warmer everyone will get them back and get to plant something in them.
Next we closed our eyes and tried to identify the “mystery” in the brown paper bag. The guesses included plant, lettuce, brocciflower (yup, that was Duane), cauliflower, broccoli, salad. The colors guessed included green and white. There were no surprises when the first cauliflower came out of the bag. When the kids were feeling the second one, they started guessing cauliflower and broccoli, mostly. When Ethan heard them guessing cauliflower he went over and touched the first one again before he had a turn at guessing the second one so he would remember what it felt like. When the second cauliflower came out, Stefan was sure it was dyed with food coloring! The third one was a little confusing as it felt a little different, some of the kids thought it was another cauliflower, and some thought it was something else.
Kimmy wanted to smell them to see if they smelled different. They didn’t have much of a smell though, so that wasn’t useful in identifying them. When we brought the cauliflowers out of the bag, each group excitedly asked us “Can we eat them? Can we eat them?” You sure can! There were actually several arguments over who was getting the biggest piece or most pieces of cauliflower! Shruti asked me “Is this a vegetable?” I told her it was. “I’m a vegetable person” she said. William had seen the green type and the white type before, but hadn’t seen the yellow type, so he only wanted to take some of the yellow one home.
Next, each child picked 2 pods of different sizes from the snow pea plants. We measured each one using an inch ruler and wrote down the measurements. Then we placed the pods in groups on pieces of cardboard squares with the numbers 1-6, where 1-6 represented the length of the pods in inches. Some of the kids measured their pods to the ½ inch, so we had to place some pods between the inch marker cardboard squares. Then we counted how many pods were each length and graphed the length of the pods on the horizontal axis and the number of pods on the vertical axis. The children varied greatly in their ability to do this. But at the end almost everyone was able to put at least one measurement on their graph.
Madeleine asked for helping doing her graph, and before I could get to her, Kimmy said “I will help you”. Kimmy proceeded to give a perfect explanation of how to graph the sizes of the pods on the graph paper. I stopped talking and just let the kids listen to Kimmy explain it. After graphing the sizes, we ate the pods, and some of the kids picked some more to take home.
We also observed the celery in the garden, and talked about why the bottom of the plant that had had paper wrapped around it was white instead of green. We also thought about what would happen if we covered the entire plant with paper.
On the way to and from the garden we pretended to be the number “7”, tigers, rainbows, starwars person, Monarch butterflies.
Seed dispersal by wind was the main lesson for today, and we spent some time on it with each group. First thing, we sat down in the “dandelion patch” on the field. We looked at the dandelion flowers, and the seeds, and talked about the function of the petals, the seeds and the little white “parachutes” on the seeds. We had fun spreading more dandelion seeds in the dandelion patch! I didn’t feel guilty about it, as they were going to spread tonight anyway with the rain. I did insist that all dandelion seeds be left there and not taken to the garden. Stefan thought it would be fine to take some home to his garden. I didn’t think his Mom would agree!
Then we threw paper models of maple seeds and watched how they rotate like a helicopter on their way down to the ground, and talked some more about seed dispersal by wind. The kids could happily have spent the entire lesson throwing their helicopter seeds.
We briefly touched on how other seeds might be dispersed – I asked about the coconut that we had used earlier in the year – and one of the kids told me they were dispersed by being carried on trucks!
How does the rain get into plants? Shruti thought water might get into plants through chlorophyll. Brian thought it might run down into the “v”s between the leaves. We had some celery stalks that had been in blue food dye overnight, so we showed them the channels that water travels up through the stem, and into the leaves. Even though water falls down everywhere else, in a plant it actually goes up, from the roots and up through the stems and into the leaves. Some of the kids tasted the blue celery.
We looked at our sweet potato in the water – it has grown long roots, and is starting to produce shoots also.
One group got to taste blood oranges. Initially, when asked what it was, everyone agreed that it was a peach. The color really turned them off tasting it, and it wasn’t until 2 of the kids ate theirs and asked for more that everyone else wanted to try some. We fed the peels to the worms, and got some worms out of the bin to look at. The kids got to take a turn at spinning the composter – this never gets old. Reynaldo noticed the very tall plant in the garden bed next to ours, and wondered what it was. It was a lettuce gone to seed – it must be about 4 feet high. Room 36 has been leaving it there because the kids are so interested in it. We looked at the regular lettuce leaves at the bottom of the plant and how there were different leaves and flowers on the long stalks, and talked about their function.
All the kids got to pick some more pea pods from our garden and take some home. We checked what colors are in our rainbow garden this week, and smelled the sweet peas along the fence. The kids wanted to know what happened to our yellow and orange flowers, so we showed them the dried up daffodils that had been in bloom a couple of weeks ago. Stefan wanted to take the pretty red tulips home that came out today, because they were just going to die here.
We have a bunch of city-slicker CA kids here! The first few raindrops falling on them were cause for consternation, so we started listing all the reasons we LIKE rain. Everyone told me it makes plants grow. We also heard that it makes snow, and ice, that it fills the ocean and the ocean never gets empty, that we use it to drink and to wash our dishes and our clothes, to flush our toilets, to fill our swimming pools and lakes.
Ms Bonnie also graciously offered to do my “see a raindrop” experiment with the class while I was in the garden with a different group. The timing of it was quite tricky – to get the kids organized to rush outside with trays of flour when the rain was coming down at just the right intensity for collecting raindrops. Ms Bonnie probably won’t be offering to do anymore of my experiments until she forgets this one! Ms Bonnie demonstrated to us how some of the kids walked around with their face intently over their tray of flour, completely shielding it from the falling rain.
After collecting the raindrops and preserving them in flour, the kids looked at the size of them, and some tried to count how many they had collected. Lynn said they looked like snowballs. Reynaldo wondered what would happen to the preserved raindrops if they were put in water. The children discovered that if they put the raindrops back in water, they stayed as round spheres, but if they squished them in the water, the whole thing ended up looking like yogurt. After garden class was over and the raindrops were collected, the class all sat down on the carpet and Ms Bonnie helped them write a class report on the raindrop exercise. The question being answered was “Can we collect raindrops?” They described their method, and their observations, using “First, next….” Format.
As the weather gets warmer we are starting to see more "wildlife" – we saw a butterfly and an orange insect in the garden today. As well as a snail, roly-polies, cutworms and earthworms. All the other classes gardens are growing fast too, so there are always new things to observe and discuss.
One of the other gardens has a windmill and we noticed that it is in all the rainbow colours. We also noticed today that our tomato plant has a small green tomato on it already.
All the kids loved pulling, washing and eating the carrots. We had the usual controversies about some carrots being larger than others. The carrot tops went into the composter – another fun thing to do. William was very concerned that we were wasting water when we were washing the carrots under the faucet!
After harvesting the carrots we sat down under the big tree and munched on them while we listened to the "Dirt made my lunch" song. We then talked about what we had eaten for lunch, and how it could be traced back to dirt. Aili wanted to know if dirt could really talk.
We finished up by playing the frisbee "Soil Cycle" game: Have the kids stand in a circle and pass the frisbee to the next person. Each person says what they are in the cycle – eg I am dirt – plants will grow in me. I am a plant, animals will eat me. I am an animal, when I die decomposers will break me down, I am a decomposer (worm, roly-poly, fungus, bacteria) I make dirt. Once they understand the cycle, play the game – the person holding the frisbee says what they are, the person who knows the next step in the cycle gets to catch the frisbee. The kids really got it – by the end of the class they could all recite the soil cycle, and even say "decomposers".
Then we looked at the desert plants, discussed what adaptations they had to help them survive in the desert, and chose one each to draw. We also talked about what kinds of animals live in the desert. Each group made their own desert-scape. We had Tiger Jaws, Panda Plants, Baseball plant, and a few flowering cacti and other succulents – very interesting for the kids to look at and touch.
After finishing up the desert part, we released some lady bugs into our garden. It’s a bit like with worms – 1 is always fun, but 20 can be intimidating! At first some of the kids didn’t want that many ladybugs crawling on them, but when they watched their classmates holding them they all wanted some. We spent a while watching them crawl on the plants or fly away.
Then it was review time – to my surprise 2 out of 3 groups were able to tell me the soil cycle without any prompting. The 3rd group needed a little help getting started, but then it came back. We also picked some snow peas and ate them while we spent a few minutes working on our garden alphabet. We added “desert, sweet peas, ladybugs, cactus, rose, lizard, water, thermometer” among others.
When I arrived at the garden on Monday morning I discovered that a fair bit of damage had occurred in the garden. The scarecrow was strewn in several pieces all about the garden, and several, perhaps ten, of the desert landscapes setting on the ground were overturned, and likely ruined. The lid was off the yellow worm bin and almost all of the newspapers in the bin had dried out. Several messes were left behind both buildings, and a large pile of dog doo was found behind the preschool building.
Sooooooo, after a visit with Bonnie about the damage it was decided that we would not fix anything, and I would show the kinders the damage and talk about why this was very poor citizenship. First we inspected the damage and talked about how the students who had spent so much time creating their desert landscapes were going to feel when they get to garden class and discover their work ruined.
Then we moved on to the dog doo. All eighteen kinders agreed that the damage was likely the work of the dog, and that it was the dog owner’s fault, and not the fault of the dog. Though it cannot be known for certain, it seems likely that the dog was allowed into the garden during the Saturday work project.
Then we moved onto developing ladybugs. All were surprised at the shape of the immature ladybug, as it bears almost no resemblance to the mature ladybug. Daniel told the class that he, being small was like the little one. His Mom was like the other ladybug!
Then we inspected the worm bin. The worms did sustain losses due to the lid having been removed. But we found castings in the bottom and mixed those castings with dirt. Almost all the children held the red wigglers in their hands. Shruti remembered that they were called red wigglers.
Madeline stated that “an experiment is what you do to learn the answer to something that you do not know”. Wow! So we planted three chive seeds and three bean seeds in small pots. One pot being a mix of soil and castings, the other just dirt. Every kinder stated that the pot with the casting would produce the fastest growing plants. These kids are switched on!
Then we picked snow peas. On the way to and from the garden they were: a train (Duane’s choice, of course), cheetas, butter flies, lady bugs and kangaroos. Last week, the week of Mother’s day, Aili said we should be mothers. So that day Mr John lead all of the children in a joyous chorus of: nag, nag, nag…all the way to room 34.
The first thing we did was set up the mint tea to start brewing, then we looked at the water that the leaves had transpired. Several people guessed that the water came from the air. I think that Morten was the only one who guessed correctly that the water had come from the leaves of the plant. We talked about perspiration and transpiration - the ways people and plants sweat. Then we talked about the water cycle and played the water cycle game with the frisbee. We also did a soil cycle reminder which seems to be a lot more fun – there’s something fascinating about yelling out “decomposers!”
After running around playing the frisbee water cycle game we sat down in the shade under the tree and drank our mint tea and ate a cookie (which we cancelled out with some carrots and snow peas later….) while we discussed the ladybug metamorphosis and looked at the newly hatched ladybug, and the larva they saw last week that had now turned into a pupa. We also looked at the baby praying mantis, and talked about how good these insects are for our garden because they both eat pests.
We finished up observing changes in our garden and eating carrots and snow peas. Brian chose for his group to be snow leopards going back to class, because we were eating snow peas.
The kids noticed the wheat they had planted is growing well. Also that the pansies are flowering.
Then it was on to the scavenger hunt. As expected, it was organized chaos, but about 80% of the kids managed to find all 9 items on their list. ….with some help….
“A root you can eat” – everyone immediately knew that was a carrot, and went running over to the garden bed to get one. 2 strawberry plants and a potato plant almost met their demise after being mistaken for carrots. I have to say that took me by surprise – we have harvested carrots so often, it never occurred to me they wouldn’t all be able to identify the carrot plants!
“A leaf you can eat” was easier – no-one had any trouble identifying and collecting the mint.
“A seed” was difficult – a few kids noticed the seeds on the strawberries, Kimmy thought the tomatoes would be a good place to look for seeds, so we all bit open another cherry tomato to find the seeds. William was the only one who identified the seeds in the redwood pinecones.
“Decomposer” was interesting, with most of the kids trying to search in the soil for a decomposer, rather than just going to the wormbin. A few of the kids were able to find roly-polies for their decomposer. Kimmy found the composter and wondered how she would get that into her ziploc bag!
Morten has an affinity for the lavender – he chose that as the plant that smelled nice. Several of the girls chose sweet peas, and almost everyone else had mint do double duty as a leaf you can eat and something that smells good.
No-one was able to find a yellow wildflower without being pointed in the right direction. It’s interesting how selective their powers of observation are – Duane was all excited when we got dressed this morning because he told me that he and I were both wearing the same clothes that we wore the day we did rainbow garden (back in the fall) – but he didn’t notice the patch of yellow flowers he (and everyone else) walks by every day. Test for the parents – where are the yellow wildfowers?
That’s all folks, see you next year!