seeds

In our last meeting, we talked about SEEDS!

We had lots of examples to look at and enjoyed the seeds some of the students brought in to share with us.   The book A Seed is Sleepy, by Dianna Aston, helped us understand more about how unique seeds are (some can weigh 60 lbs.!) and how they are similar, as well.

Here is a link to the recipe for the delicious pumpkin muffins that we ate.

We used the different seeds to make mandalas.

The kids worked together on one mandala at each table.  We used clear contact paper to stick the seeds on, however glue would have been a better option.

Some of the seeds were too heavy to stick well, so we covered each mandala with another sheet of contact paper.

Another option is to use an old CD as a circular base to make your design.  A beautiful example can be seen at Twig and Toadstool.

At the end of our meeting, we headed out to the 2nd grade garden to harvest some of the cabbage that had grown.  It's amazing what can come from a tiny seed!

building a compost pile

What goes into a compost pile?

A good compost pile will contain green materials for nitrogen (fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags), brown materials for carbon (dried leaves, straw, old grass clippings, shredded paper egg cartons, ), water and air.

Our garden club listened to a book all about dirt while eating clementine oranges and apple slices, so we could compost the rinds and cores.

Some of the things we put into our school compost pile included leaves, dryer lint, cotton quilting scraps, and the children's all time favorite...aged horse manure!

The children took turns dumping the items into our fenced off plot near the garden.

Crushed egg shells, collected by Sra. Melara over many months, were also added.

Composting makes us SMILE.

We also got to dig up our buried treasure from the last meeting.  There was no change in our radish, a root vegetable.  But the banana peel had disappeared!

One lucky guy found a helpful worm!

A plastic bag is NOT good for composting.

A friendly cricket stopped by to check out what we were doing.

The beginning of a tiny green pepper was discovered growing in this white flower.

And finally, we cleared out the large plants from our garden and added them to our compost pile.

Why is composting important?

It reduces the amount of waste we send to the landfill, returns nutrients to the soil, naturally fertilizes, and is a great way to save money for gardeners and farmers.

For more information on composting, visit this webpage from Alberta, Cananda or this one on composting in schools.

buried treasure

Today we buried treasure!

The children learned about the importance of healthy soil and how composting is an amazing way to recycle kitchen scraps and yard waste into garden gold.

Each child chose a baggie filled with something to be composted.  In order to compare the benefits of helping the compost along by chopping up kitchen scraps, some bags contained whole items, like a banana peel, and some contained chopped up pieces.

We let the children sketch what their items looked like before we buried them.

Then we headed outside to the garden to bury our treasure.

A few of the items we buried included celery leaves, peppers, cleaned egg shells, looseleaf paper, lemon peel, and we even buried a plastic bag to see what would happen to it. 

Each child had a popsicle stick labeled with what type of treasure they had buried in order to  X mark the spot.

At our next meeting, we will dig up our treasures and see what has happened to them underground.  It should be a great experiment.

For a snack, we served bananas and clementine oranges, making sure to save the peels for a compost pile.

And we had just a few minutes to play our carnival game of feeding the monsters.  The kids had fun deciding if items in a bucket should be thrown in the trash, be composted, or be recycled.  Those monsters were pretty picky!

sunflowers

Picking out the seeds from the sunflowers is always a fun activity in our garden club.  It's amazing how many seeds these things make!

They make quite a mess, too!

While some kids sorted seeds, others decorated envelopes for our seed packets.  This year, we are participating in our annual fall festival with our own garden club booth.  We'll have a game for kids to play, and if they win, the prize will be a packet of sunflower seeds to plant next year.

We had a themed snack this morning...grapes, cheese and celery shaped like a sunflower, and of course, sunflower seeds!  We listened to the book Weeds Find a Way, since weed picking is one of our least favorite activities.

scavenger hunt!

To start off the year, we sent our garden club members on a scavenger hunt.  The gardens hadn't been touched much over the summer, so there were lots of things to find and explore.

Our colorful rain barrel is full of water!  Now we just need to hook it up to a hose.

Sra. Melara had some handy bug catchers that we could use to observe those squash bugs a little closer.

The sunflowers are full of seeds, and they are always fun to pick out.

Find something beautiful?  Check!

The weeds were taking over the walking path, but the kids were undaunted.

The okra did amazing over the summer.  Some of them had dried and you could hear the seeds shaking inside the pods just like a baby rattle.

That's a lot of squash bugs!

Group shot at the beginning of the year!  It will be fun to watch them and our garden grow.

Scavenger hunts are always a great outdoor activity.  Here are some links to some already prepared lists to hunt for:

Nature Scavenger Hunt

Hunt with Things to Find and Things to Do

Ready? Set. Go!

bird feeders

Fall is the perfect time to start thinking about feeding the birds.  If we get in the habit now, they'll know where to come when the snowy weather sets in.

These bird feeders are made from orange halves, sunflower seeds, twine, and skewers to poke the holes in the oranges.  The kids had fun scooping and eating the oranges, but poking the holes and tying the knots was a little difficult for the younger students.

If you want, you can even make this bird feeder out of a pumpkin!  It's best to add some little notches so the twine won't slip around the pumpkin.

Find a sturdy branch, tie it up, and wait to see which birds love these seeds the most.

raised beds

In 2013, we decided to use cinderblocks to raise the garden beds.  This works well with small children to help them understand where to step, and it gave them a little place to sit as they dug and planted in the beds.  Our simple wire fence has done well over the years to keep the rabbits and deer from enjoying our garden too much.

One of the most amazing parts of any garden is simply....the gate.  An incredible world lies just behind it.  It is easy to imagine the excitement building in the little children as they enter through the gate and begin to investigate the creatures and plant world living within the garden.

And what child doesn't love watering a garden?  This year, we may try using yogurt containers with tiny holes poked through the bottom and a bucket of water filled near the beds to use for dunking the tubs.  The children will be able to water without squirting one another and without the risk of drowning delicate seeds.