Compost, Seeds, and Water

The past three weeks have been very exciting, the wonderful team has gotten to know the children through our weekly Wednesday visits.

We kicked things off with a garden party night where we got to meet the children and their parents, it was great to see them try a bunch of new vegetables with our lovely garden cracker activity led by Nadine and Kristen. They also got to learn about the colors of the rainbow in relation to colors of vegetables with Carla's delightful activity. We couldn't wait to see them again and begin teaching them about the garden.

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Week one in the garden was all about composting!

We had a wonderful crafts activity station where the children painted their own compost buckets in groups, a reading activity that taught them about why composting is good and an insightful activity led by Maggie teaching the kids how and what to compost. We joined them for lunch after the lesson and brought up a compost bin for them to discard their compostable lunch scraps in. It was a great first day and we really enjoyed seeing the kids eager to learn and apply that knowledge.

Week two was a lesson about seeds!

The kids got to  have a great lesson where they first learned about seeds, how to plant them and how they grow. We brought them to the garden and had them plant pea, carrot and spinach seeds. After planting the seeds they rotated to the seed card group, where they made macaroni art cards but instead of macaroni they used seeds! They also had a reading lesson which assisted in understanding the lesson about seeds they had learned. I know they couldn't wait to show their parents the art they had made!

Week three was about water, we just finished this lesson today! 

The children really had a great time. We introduced a tactile lesson to have them understand how water affects soil, we made mud pies by adding varying amounts of water to dirt having them feel and play with the soil and explaining the differences between fresh garden soil and store bought soil. Then we brought them back to the garden to water the seeds they had planted last week. They rotated to the other groups, one explaining the relationship of the elements to the Earth with a little blanket "stream" activity and another craft station, where they visited the stream by the classroom, observed the nature around them, identified the litter found around the stream and they then got to paint afterwards. We think they really enjoyed today's lesson :)

Next week we're gearing up for a harvesting lesson! We'll be harvesting Kale and cooking it so keep an eye out for more posts. We've also got plenty of events in coordination with the Appalachian Student Dietetics Association to keep the garden beautiful and blooming!

Our main event, The Earth Day Celebration Garden Party which will be open to students, parents and children is coming up on April 23rd, 2016 from 2-4PM. We're really excited and looking forward to it so please join us!

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