CASCADIA ELEMENTARY 3RD GRADE GARDEN PROGRAM
With the school year coming to an end, there are only two more classes to participate in at Cascadia Elementary. The final classes will entail harvesting everything from the garden, as there will be no one around during the summer to care for the garden, on top of that Cascadia Elementary is moving locations. This week though there is unfortunately no garden class, because all the third graders are in testing. These tests cannot be missed for the state makes these essentially mandatory, and thus our garden program is canceled for the week. Regardless Rowan, Jessica (who felt well enough to come back this week), and I are doing a lot of maintenance before the end of the school year. We start our morning off with weeding the garden beds, pruning back trees and shrubs in the perennial garden, and watering all the plants. This is a big job, and jobs that we unfortunately just do not have the time to accomplish everything with the kids. Well, we might be able to get this all done with the kids, but there are more important learning activities that they are better off spending their time with us doing rather than constant maintenance. The goal is to form a positive relationship between the garden space and the kids, not a feeling that this space is all simply work. We are able to get a lot done, we even installed a drip irrigation system so that the students could more easily water the garden space when we are not there. Checking on the tomatoes they are beginning to redden up, fingers are crossed they will be done in one to two weeks to be able to harvest for the potlatch! Speaking of the potlatch, we snuck in a few transplants, such as kale, lettuce, basil, and nasturtiums so that there will be enough to harvest for a plethora of food. It was fun to work in the garden and make everything look really nice, but it is always more fun when the third graders are there.
Tiny Trees Outdoor Preschool
This week has been so busy, I have taken on an extra day the past few weeks to make sure I have enough hours for the SOS program, I am looking like I am a little ahead of schedule at this point which feels good. The teachers at Tiny Trees have mentioned that substitute teachers are needed for summer program, and that they have mentioned my name to the administration. I had an interview with them this week as a possible paid substitute teacher this summer! The interview went quite well and I am looking forward to giving even more of my time to this great organization!
As for the actual work done at Tiny Trees, this Wednesday it rained a little in the morning so the canopy was up. The children were not thrilled about the rain. Some of them cried as they showed up for school, which hasn’t happened in quite some time. They seemed to be upset, after being able to dress in jeans and shorts recently, that they had to return to their rain gear. After just a few shed tears though everything seemed to go alright. I read When You Give A Mouse A Cookie in Spanish to some children, though my Spanish is quite rusty, I hardly knew what I was reading, but the children didn’t seem to mind nor notice much.
I realized that my conflict resolution skills have gotten quite a lot better since I have started here. Approaching any conflict I am able to take a mostly unbiased stance when approaching their problems amongst themselves. I am also able to help them come to actual concrete solutions which has felt really good to not have to rely on the assistant and lead teacher, I feel confident in my own abilities to help in the classroom.
Finally we did have an interesting lesson this week where the students discovered slope through rolling objects down a hill covered in paint. I was surprised to see some kids really struggle with this task while others conquered it. The struggle and mastery seemed to be in picking what objects would roll down the hill best.
Leave a Reply