1/16/18
This week started out at 12:30 pm in the Growing Gardens office beginning with a check in meeting. This meeting included weekly updates, highlights and ideas to be shared. Another intern and I were just sitting in listening while 3 garden instructors had a discussion, it was similar to an Evergreen-esc format of a seminar. After the meeting, until about 2:45 pm, I went over curriculum for the day with my garden instructor and laminated cards for a plant activity later. Hitting 3 pm, we were at Glenfair with a schedule as such:
- Second lunch – 3 to 3:30 pm
- Circle time – 3:30 to 3:45
- Recess – 3:45 to 4:05
- Garden time – 4:05 to 4:30
- Art/crafts and tasting lab – 4:30 to 5:00
The focus today was how plants grow and anatomy. Circle time was fun because we had the kids act out how a plant grows. They started as seeds on the ground with the lights off, we put fake soil on them (a brown blanket), spritzed them with water, had them slowly stand up as we turned on the light (sunlight) and had them spring up like a plant, it was adorable. After recess we went into the garden to use the mystery box. This included and covered box with a hole for the kids to put their hands in. They would feel for what was inside the box without seeing it and have the classmates guess what they were touching. Our mystery items were a root, a flower and a leaf. They thought it was funny to guess if there was a chicken inside of the box… oh boy.
To round out the day, we went inside to start arts/crafts which included using cards to organize the stages of a plant, seed to flower. They were really good at it! The next activity was to take cut up vegetables we brought (cauliflower, broccoli, red pepper, carrots, celery and sunflower seeds) and match them up on a piece of paper that resembled a flower. For example, broccoli and cauliflower would be the petals, celery the stem, carrots as roots and etc. You can see what I mean in my picture in this post or my instagram! After, kids got to eat their veggies with a yogurt dip we made. All in all, they surprisingly loved the veggies (a little scared of the peppers until they tried them), it was funny, some kids called them gross before they tried them and when I had them just try a little, some loved it!