1/9/18
First day of interning went well! I started off in the office at Growing Gardens at 12 pm where I went over the curriculum for the day to be used at Glenfair with Sasha, the Garden Coordinator. I also will be doing weekly office work, today that included planting Paperwhite to be used in the classroom. The students will measure each week how far the Paperwhite grows. Other office work was to tediously peel crayons used for a project later that day with the students. When office work was finished up, I read “Portland School Garden Assessment” by Anna Garwood, Pesha Wasserstrom, Scott Logan and Stephanie Steeves. This pdf was a study of local Portland school gardens on their use, funding, community involvement and importance. It was good background information for how impactful farm to school programs have become.
At 2:30 pm I headed over to Glenfair Elementary to begin working with the students. Our schedule went:
- 3pm – Students eat “second” lunch
- 3:30 pm – Head to the classroom to do circle time
- 3:45 pm – Recess
- 4:00 pm – Scavenger hunt in the garden
- 4:30 pm – Head back to the classroom to do leaf prints of leaves the students collected outside
- 4:45 pm – Apple and yogurt tasting lab
- 5:00 pm – Students head home and begin clean up
We worked with 2nd graders which was exciting but their attention spans only last so long so today I learned how to keep them busy while still learning. The scavenger hunt in the garden entailed students partnering up and identifying different plants as “soft” “hard” or “dead” “alive”. We went over what they found and they compared their findings with their peers. Ending on a food lab was fun because the students looked forward to it the most and absolutely loved the apples, some begging for the recipe for the cinnamon, honey yogurt we mixed!