September/October garden tour (aka photo dump)

Posted on October 14, 2015 by kidsingardens

Every month or so I like to walk around the garden and catch y’all up on new things, beginning this month with our “farm to school” banners which Mr. Wells just hung outside the after school club. This set features produce grown in San Diego County in the fall. They add a lively, colorful element to this outside eating/studying area.

My Garden Ambassadors are a hardworking group. These two take charge of lunchtime composting.

They love leaving me notes—a habit I encourage by leaving them notes back.

Mr. Copeland stops by as the K/1st graders were showing off our new set of gloves in after school garden class.

Lots of cool season planting due to having lots of space due to our spectacularly lousy summer crop:

In after school class, sometimes we just play games in the garden. With everyone occupied with fun stuff at the table, I can pull one or two students out for small jobs or teachable moments.

We have been making cinnamon maple applesauce in our longer format classes during the school day.

I’ve been printing the recipe in Thursday’s bulletin. If students make it at home, they send me a photo, and I invite them to enjoy lunch in the school garden with friends.

At school:

At home:

Finally, I’ve slowly been collecting “seasonal touches” to decorate the garden. I saw this years ago at a school garden in San Fransisco when our garden was just getting started, and it was too much to consider at the time. But now, I’m ready. Garage sales are a great place to find decor out of season. This came from the Methodist Church’s rummage sale, and I think it adds a lovely autumn touch. (Also, I bought the over-the-door wreath hanger which keeps the arrangement in place.)

Garden Ambassadors wanted to put up Halloween decorations so they hung webs and spiders—appropriate for the garden!

Up next: Why is Mrs. Tree crying? (Possibly my favorite post ever, next time.)

Back to school, back to the garden

Posted on August 28, 2015 by kidsingardens

It’s still August, and we’ve been in school for 2.5 weeks. (I know, I know.) Nonetheless, it has been wonderful to be back out in the garden with the lovable children of Julian Elementary.

During our first afterschool garden class with the little ones, we read stories about grapes and then gobbled some up. (It was my first time reading Lousy, Rotten, Stinkin’ Grapes by Margie Palatini, and I recommend this retelling of an Aesop’s Fable—great vocabulary and beautiful illustrations.) Though we had a lovely crop of grapes at the beginning of the school year, the kids have been loving them too as they walk by the fence line and so we supplemented with a donation of organic grapes from Miss Anne! (A note on the whiteboard in the staff room turned up an offer of backyard produce in no time.)

The older children in my second garden class painted letters for our Early Start Kindergarten alphabet garden and spruced up the compost bucket. This was a good, quiet activity in the shade on a very hot day. And helpful too—every year these letters have to be repainted.

“S” for sage….sweltering…in the sun….

In garden class during the school day, I worked with first grade students on understanding the recipe for compost using the visual aid I made below. The laminated pictures stick to the black bin (foam board) with velcro:

Then we headed out to the garden to practice sorting and adding ingredients at the bin and peeking in the bottom of the unit to see what became of last year’s school lunch.

I heart generating excitement and mystery in the garden. During our introduction to the lesson in the classroom, I told the kids to always be on the lookout for something new in the garden and wondered aloud if anyone would notice the brand new “Mr. Tree.” Invariably someone would spot it on our way to the compost bins.

(Sidenote: Marisa gave me the pieces for this “tree face,” Chris hung it, and I love it so much. It is my new goal to put a face on every juniper behind the fence line and create our own army of ents.)

While I had half of the class at the bins, the classroom teacher had the other half under the plum tree reading Compost Stew by Mary McKenna Siddals.

With the two kindergarten classes, we talked about grapevines and our first garden rule for the year: Be Safe. We decided we would practice “being safe” by walking in the garden instead of running.

While the classroom teacher read The Fox and the Grapes by Mark White, I toured the children around four major features in the garden, and we learned these vocabulary words: Kandu Gate, rainwater, grapevine and gazebo. At each location I gave a child a photo of the feature to hold (printed from a picture and laminated—I plan to make a set of these for everything in the garden for games and vocabulary review.)

Then when we returned to the classroom for wrap-up, we sang:

“Have you ever seen a garden, a garden, a garden? Have you every seen a garden? A garden like mine? With a gate, and rainwater, and grapevines and a gazebo? Have you ever seen a garden, a garden like mine? “

This is a song I will sing all year long with the younger grades, inserting new, seasonal vocabulary.

It’s going to be a great year! (Signing off with a picture of the invaluable cart I wheel around with everything I need in the classroom and out in the garden.) BTW, as of today, I am about 200 clicks short of 30,000 views on this blog. Thanks ever so much for following our story as it unfolds in our little school garden…..

Mary Poppins and gardening

Posted on September 5, 2014 by kidsingardens

In ev’ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game

From Spoonful of Sugar in Mary Poppins

Yet again, Mary is spot on, and I’ve applied her insights this week in the garden with children.

Thanks to Julian Pathway’s tireless persistence in applying for an after-school program grant, our elementary school now has a full-fledged set of programs before and after school for children. I work with the program on Wednesday, teaching two garden electives and one other (this cycle it’s Greek and Latin roots, which being the word nerd, I love.)

When students arrive at after-school program, they have already had a day of school, so we’ve designed these garden classes to be different from the formal lessons I teach during the school day. After-school gardening is longer (45 minutes) and with less children (10-12), so we can really get work done. But how to do that and make it engaging?

Last week I realized we needed to clear out a lot of rotting apples around the trees. A good cultural practice, removing rotting fruit keeps the area free from possible infestation of other critters. As such, I had the kids gather ten apples, and then we had a carnival-style “rotten apple compost olympics” with the kids standing behind a line and trying to toss the fruit into compost bins marked with different points. We kept scores, played a second round, and had to go to a championship tiebreaker. (Shamelessly, I won by one point.) Voila!—hundreds of apples composted. (And they left with big smiles on their faces.)

This week I wanted to re-mulch our baby apple and pear trees with some donated wood chips, which were a little distance from the trees. First we had a short chat about social insects and how small creatures working in cooperation can do huge things, like build massive termite mounds… or mulch 8 trees in 20 minutes. Then we then set up a “mulch brigade” and got the assembly line going. The kids worked incredibly hard, and we were all amazed at what we accomplished in a short time. Then we went and tossed a few more apples, and they asked if we could go both “games” again next week.

Thanks Mary! Practically perfect advice.

Garden Tour: September 2013

Posted on October 1, 2013 by kidsingardens

Never have I gone so long without a post—never have I had a busier first six weeks of school. (A friend gently pointed out I always say that.) Anyway, welcome back, dear readers. Let’s stroll around and catch up.

Starting at the junior high garden, the umbrellas were installed at the mosaic tables, providing much needed shade in these warm school months. We got good ones–sturdy and rated for wind.

I met with two “Garden Beneficials” on a Saturday to dig up comfrey and broccoli at Mary’s house to transplant to school. (Gardens grow community!)

How how I love these ladies! (Laural and Mary)

Grant money paid for this all-weather chalkboard. Domingo hung it for us behind the outdoor kitchen prep island so that we can write recipes, illustrate lesson plans, and more!

Once again applications went out to the fifth grade students, and I picked a new crop of 10 ambassadors.

Four varieties of fresh figs were donated by the Farm Stand in Escondido for a taste test at recess.

For our harvest of the month (September—tomatoes), we harvested, made salsa, learned tomato trivia, looked at pictures of heirlooms, and read children’s books. My “garden beneficials” group continue to bless us all with their time and commitment to teaching with me in the garden.

One week I gave two tours: one to the United Methodist Women, another to the Ramona Garden Club. Both were big garden lovefests.

I lalso led a weekend fieldtrip to Camp Stevens as part of our Farm to School program. Camp Stevens has an amazing organic farm, garden and outdoor education program—an incredible resource in Julian. We played “Jays vs. Chickadees” under the oak trees and then went out to the field to make our own salsa on the spot. You took a chip, went and grabbed a cherry tomato off the vine, then brought it back and piled on onions, peppers, cucumbers that Rita was furiously chopping up. Repeat.

After helping to harvest the spaghetti squash, we headed back to the main camp for their “seasonal supper” to which they invite the larger community.

All the bins back at school got turned and compost sifted to make room for this year’s lunchtime scraps. Ambassadors are posted at the trashcans at lunch to help kids put their leftovers in the right bucket, and then third grade helpers come out to dump the scraps, add straw, add rainwater, and then return the buckets to the lunch area.

And finally, I’ve enjoyed working with my son’s 2/3 class every Friday for a half hour of “garden time”—a new thing I’m trying with his teacher. We are learning songs, memorizing plant names, eating what’s ready, going on sensory walks and drawing in our journals. My son’s class is a very sweet group of kids who absolutely love the garden, and I look forward to our time together each week.

Garden Tour, April 2013

Posted on April 9, 2013 by kidsingardens

Join me as we take our periodic stroll around the garden!

Junior High students often change the message on the blackboard hung in their garden. Yes, welcome indeed!

I might have mentioned we are planting a lot of peas to get ready for our first Harvest of the Month program in May. (Pinecones are to discourage critters from walking in the bed.)

As we were harvesting the broccoli, one child told me she didn’t know that the part of broccoli we eat is curled up flowers. I told her we’d leave one plant in the ground to flower so she could see for herself.

Broccoli is also coming up in one of our container gardens. That’s one of the funny things about school gardens—mystery plants! (Someone, at some time, had an idea, a vision, a spare plant…who knows?)

The strawberry plants look luscious. Keep. meaning. to. enclose. them. in. nets.

The tulips are finally up in the breast cancer awareness ribbon. Watching them bloom took on new meaning for me this year as two very brave and beautiful friends of mine have kicked cancer’s butt in the last year.

New child-created signage on the bulletin board on the CATCH nutrition concept: go, slow and whoa foods.

We’ve been moving native strawberries out of this prime veggie growing location to the hillside around the fruit trees, as a move toward a permaculture fruit tree guild. We hadn’t moved all of them by Science Day though so I split the bed to make some room for pea planting, pinning back the strawberries with some white picket fencing we keep moving around the garden. Cute!

Someone donated this flag last year, and we fly it—announcing our allegiance to daffodils!

Mrs. Shull’s fourth grade class peas. Each child did a letter on an index card, I laminated them and kids taped them to bamboo skewers.

We have a gazillion wildflower seeds in the garden, from seed ball making activities, former projects, etc. Wildflowers have a special immunity in our garden. Wherever they want to pop up, we gladly let them stay.

This little donated table broke. No worrries. With a tree stump standing in, it makes another cozy little spot to hang out in the garden.

A local grape grower trimmed these for us! Our first crop this fall? (Stay tuned.)

Look who decided to bloom. (Oh little wisteria, you have no idea how close you were to being uprooted.)

Our honeysuckle reading teepee. Last week a child sitting inside yelled, “Mrs. Elisara! Come here! There’s a chrysallis at the top of the teepee!” Sure enough, a butterfly-to-be was dangling from the ceiling. (The president of the entomology club later ID’ed it.)

If you’re not familiar with Box Tops, they are the little pink coupons found on hundreds of products. Schools collect them and mail them in, receiving 10 cents for each one. It adds up, and at our school, the proceeds have been earmarked for the garden. Twice a year we receive a check. Here’s what we bought with our latest earnings: pea trellises, bean towers, seed starting mix, trays, compost, and our 3×3 raised bed frame.

Finally, it’s always good to step back and get the big picture!

What’s worthy of a 100th post? Compost!

Posted on April 6, 2013 by kidsingardens

The glories of compost….much ink has been spilled on this everyday miracle. Scraps of food that transform into “black gold” with leaves, water, air, time, and microbial mechanics. It’s poetry pay dirt, and it happens under our noses.

Our compost system at school is a passive system. In other words, we don’t get around to turning it very often and only harvest it about twice a year. Nonetheless, the magic still happens.

Garden Ambassador turning the bin with a pitchfork at recess:

Fourth grade students sifted the bottom layer of the bin into the wheelbarrow using stacked plant trays.

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you: the fruit and vegetable leftovers from Julian Elementary, ready for our next planting!

Girl Scout composts her way to Silver Award

Posted on September 29, 2012 by kidsingardens

Local girl scout Sara Rott decided to do her Silver Award on the junior high garden. One major component was starting a composting system. In addition to educating her peers, she also helped with the mechanics of the system so that it will continue for years.

Here are two of the signs she made. One set will hang at the elementary school; the other at the junior high.

Also, she built this screen to harvest finished compost. Days after she delivered it, we used it at Family Fun Day.

This is an excerpt of what she wrote about her project in her final report:

My experience with this project has brought new light to how a community can come together to help. With my voice and my research in composting and building a school garden, kids and adults started to listen. When people started to see the results of the garden and started enjoying the flowers and vegetables that were being grown, my efforts were worth trying. My composting helped the garden to make soil instead of buying it. What was being grown and eaten was being recyled back into soil. This great achievement has brought awareness not only to me but to my school mates, teachers, our district supervisor, principals, and school board members.