SPRING SPRING SPRING it makes us want to SING SING SING!!!
Since the weather has been so warm and the leaves are starting to turn green outside, we decided it was time for us to engage in some exciting gardening within our classroom! Having won two BP A+ for Energy grants last year at River Valley School, we were excited to get involved in our school community garden projects!
To get us started, we invited Sara from Puzzle Permaculture to join our Kindergarten classrooms, giving us a birds eye view of gardening and helping us get started with successfully growing some edible goodness in our very own classrooms!
Sara taught us all about gardens and shared many interesting facts with us including:
- Dandelions may be weeds but they help to start the pollination process for bees
- Worm poops actually helps plants grow
- Snails are not good for your garden
- All gardens need space, sunlight, water and soil
- A squished garden leaves less room for weeds to grow
A Birds Eye View
Sara got us all to fly around the classroom and pretend that we were birds. What did we see? Who could we see? Where were we going? Taking a birds eye view allowed us to look down on what a garden might look like from the sky. We recognized that trees and plants would take on the shape of a circle and so we created our very own gardens with this concept in mind.
We made half gardens using a variety of ingredients, some that we knew about and LOVED like strawberries and tomatoes, others we had never even heard of!!! What IS a walking onion!?
With only half a garden to work with, that didn’t stop us from filling our gardens to the brim! Hey, the less empty space we have the less chance we will get weeds right!? Also, take a peek at our gardens, are they in rows?… interesting!
Once we completed our gardens, shared them and talked about all the yummy goodness they each held, we started getting hungry so we moved on to creating our own garden with yummy PEAS!!!
SWEET PEAS GROWING PEAS
Sara soaked our peas over night and helped us to make a perfect little tray for them to grow in.
First we filled the tray up with soil…
Second, we sprinkled our peas on top of the soil…
Third, we put the other black tray on top of our peas and talked about how we needed to add books on top to weigh our peas down, into the soil, for a couple of days…
On Friday, for our fourth step, we were instructed to take the books off and place our clear lid on top, creating a mini greenhouse…
For our final steps, we watered them lightly as needed, to keep them damp, and it was so exciting to even THINK that we would have pea shoots growing within a couple of days and sure enough, even after day ONE, we had some signs of life…
After FIVE days, we had some serious growth that made us all shout in excitement… PEAS PEAS PEAS!!!
And after SEVEN days, just like Sara said, our pea shoots were ready to EAT!
OM NOM NOM
We compared our pea shoots to the sunflower shoots our friends in Kindergarten B grew and we had a pretty even split of children who liked each kind.
The reaction was hesitant at first but once we realized that the pea shoots tasted like peas and the sunflower shoots tasted like sunflower seeds, we wanted to keep on eating.
KINDERGARTEN A COULD HAVE TURNED INTO A ROOM FULL OF BUNNIES!
Overall, our first experience growing food in our classroom was a HUGE SUCCESS! We really enjoyed watching how quickly our plants grew and we enjoyed tasting them even more!!!
We even brought our pea shoots to life by making them talk using ChatterPix Kids!
…. until next time ….
~ Miss Kim
