Oct 16th
This week we had fun exploring all things garlic! We ate plenty of roasted garlic and talked about some amazing things garlic can do for us in addition to being delicious. Students made their own garlic tapenade and learned about why garlic is considered to be a vampire repellent. The students planted lots of garlic in the garden while measuring out a grid to accurately space the garlic plants. We did quite a bit of garden cleanup, including harvesting nasturtium flowers and kale.
Oct 9th
This week we had a hot and sunny day in the garden! Students focused on seeds. The kindergarten class looked through a sampling of plants at the end of their life-cycle, pulling apart pods and dead flowers to find the seeds within. We opened some overripe and underripe fruits of the garden to learn more. First and Second grade gathered seeds onto sticky seed bracelets to keep in their journals. Third graders built their own scales using water as a counterweight and weighed all of the potatoes grown in the ConVal district. They discovered that our elementary school gardens yielded just over 50 lbs of four varieties of potatoes! Everyone ate cooked potatoes and we even did some garden clean-up as we begin to prepare the garden for Winter.
Oct 3rd
We had a foggy and cool day in the garden this week. The kindergarten class talked about the four seasons, shared a story and walk, and harvested potatoes. First and Second grade located evidence of fall in the changing garden and played a matching game using paint color samples to find a huge variety of colorful specimens from the garden. Their ability to find very close color matches was impressive! Third grade students learned about how and why leaves change colors in the fall. They also harvested potatoes! We pulled a fat orange carrot from the garden and ate it with kale, nasturtium, sun gold tomatoes, and chives.
Sept 28th
This week we learned about edible plant parts. Kindergarten/first grade released a butterfly into the garden and then took an edible plant tour. We harvested carrots, beets, kale, nasturtium, lemon sorrel, basil, and a large radish. We sang a plant parts song with bongo accompanying.
Grade 2 went on a plant part hunt, accounting for how many plant parts in the garden are edible.
Grade 3 sorted through food packages to figure out what part of the plant makes up many of their favorite foods. They also learned why some plants are not edible.
Everyone made nasturtium-basil pesto and ate it on slices of lemon cucumbers with beets and chives.
Sept 21st
Kindergarten looked at bug drawings and learned how to draw a ladybug. We also explored the garden with magnifying glasses and spotted two monarch butterflies!
In Grade 2, we set out a variety of specimens from our garden including living bugs, dead bugs, and plants that had been eaten by bugs. Students had the chance to explore our natural objects collection with magnifying glasses. They listened to an argumentative bug poem and participated in a bug body part song and dance.
Grade 3 Looked at our bug specimens and played a bug predator game to learn more about the relationship between helpful bugs, harmful bugs, and protective plants.
Everyone crunched on fresh veggies from the school garden including beets, lemon cucumbers, sweet peppers, kale, bush beans, parsley, and basil.
We are making great use of the new covered area by the garden, thank you!
Sept. 16th
We had a fun, wet first day back in the garden. The students found the garden overflowing with produce and every square inch filled with plant life. The Kindergarten class used their five senses to experience the garden through a sensory scavenger hunt, touching rough squash leaves, smelling calendula petals, tasting herbs, and hearing the rain smack the garden. Jumping right into this season’s theme of Field Investigation, Grades 1 and 2 searched for evidence of garden care and developed scientific drawings of plant parts. Third graders also explored the garden with a focus on their five senses while creating descriptive phrases to illustrate their experiences. They documented their impressions and collectively created a poem to capture it. Our fresh snack was lemon cucumber slices, kale, tomatoes, basil, and chives.We also crunched on sweet green beans from the teepee. Here is the poem by the Third Grade:
Our Nutritious Garden
The towering violet morning glories,
Oh my! Numerous purple petals.
The mushrooms have a weird, unexpected texture.
Lemon cucumbers are as spikey as a porcupine.
The dill smells sour,
Spicy mustard greens.
The nasturtiums are the warm bright colors of the sun!
They taste spicy like garlic.
Kale, as good as candy.