{How Does Your Garden Grow?} Part 2

So last week the rest of the ECDC moved onto learning about fish and oceans and we did some, too. But we asked Ms. Molly if we could also continue our garden study since the peas were showing such a strong interest in it, and she agreed! I knew it was something we had to continue to pursue when I saw signs like this pea drawing pictures of seeds and writing about it on his own during free time. 

I snapped a picture of him working in the morning during free centers and was elated to find him drawing pictures of the things we had been discussing. They are making so many great connections! Not to mention it makes my heart soar when they practice spelling on their own! Their confidence is growing and I love it! Here's what I found when I peeked into his journal:

The peas had been wanting to examine the seeds the week before, so I found this little container and we made it into a seed collection. We put a few seeds from each pack that we had in the container to look at and then we brought some seeds from home to add as well. 

They quickly figured out that the very tiny seeds got lost easily, so they decided to make seed cards for the little seeds. I got out the seed packets so they could look at how to spell the names of the plants, but for some they just sounded them out.





They used sentence strips and glued on the larger seeds and used tape for the very tiny seeds.

We decided to do a little artwork by painting what would become flower petals!

Small paper bowels were the center of the flowers.

They turned out pretty stinkin cute!

We had a morning message asking what kind of flowers they liked best and they drew them and then wrote the name.

I found this cute idea on Pinterest and added it to math for a little sequencing fun. They "planted a pattern!"



I love the uniqueness of the scarecrows!

I also brought something really fascinating to school....worms! The boys were ALL about it!

We learned how important these decomposers are to the soil and how they help keep the soil healthy and help plants grow.

We made our worms a worm farm so that we could watch them dig tunnels in a glass fishbowl.



After dropping them on top they quickly burrowed under the soil.

One pea made them a label so we would know what it was!

Afterwards, we ate some worms, but they were of the gummy variety!

After all our worm work, everyone drew and painted worms. I cut them out and then they added them to a big brown piece of paper. They shared their observations about worms and I typed those up so we could add them, too.

They made some great observations. I loved the drawings. Some worms were very fat and some were very thin.

You can check out our worm observations inside the door of our classroom.

In the middle of the week it rained pretty hard and we had been reading about how rainwater is the best water for plants. Ms. Angela ran outside and caught us some rainwater to save for later!

One of my favorite projects has been our compost bin. The peas love it, too! Both classes have consistently been bringing things to add to the compost and we have been watering it and turning it before we cover it back up. Since ours is relatively small and we've been adding an even amount of green and brown waste (veggie peelings & dead leaves, etc.) our materials are breaking down pretty quickly. You can see below the difference between one week to the next how nice and dark it's getting. You can get good soil anywhere from 4 weeks to a year after you start a pile, it just depends on what you put in it. If you are interested in starting one at home, this site has some good information. Hopefully we will have dark rich soil by the end of school!

 

 There was also a BIG mystery last week about our garden. Something dug up part of the garden and ate some of our radishes and morning glory seedlings. One morning when I got to school this is what was happening:

These peas took it upon themselves to brainstorm what animal could possibly be getting into our garden! They were each writing a list. Talk about problem solvers! Look at their thinking faces:

Here's just one of the lists below. It says, "skunk, rabbit, armadillo, fox, mole". They were very realistic about what animals could be getting to the garden. One of the peas even came up with some criteria: They have to live in Texas, be able to dig, like to eat plants or bugs and come out at night. 

They got out the ipads and looked up the animals on their lists to see who was the most likely culprit.

I just had to add this picture because she was pretty grossed out by what armadillos look like up close! But armadillos were on her short list of culprits!

Later, we repaired the damage and replanted the seeds that were eaten.



We have quite a few sprouts..our peas, tomatoes, squash and green beans have all sprouted!

The peas are very happy gardeners. I love watching their faces as they rush outside to check the garden everyday. Our garden is growing and so are we!

Have a great week!



How Does Your Garden Grow?

Last week may have been one of the best weeks in Pre-K ever! At least I think so, because I love, love, love to garden and that was our theme! Amy and I started preparing for this week about a month ago because we had some big ideas that we knew the peas would get excited about. We wanted to use garden week to do some S.T.E.M. activities and do a big project with the peas.  (If you don't know what S.T.E.M. is you can check out this post!) We started by discussing gardens with our classes and came up with some driving questions to get us started.

We discussed how to start the project and what we would need. Then we started brainstorming what we would plant in our garden. I let them go crazy with any ideas they wanted to add to the idea board so that later we could look them up and they could learn if they were realistic ideas.

We also researched what kind of materials we needed for a garden. We decided we wanted a raised garden bed. The peas decided they also wanted pots for planting, we would need garden tools, a watering hose, seeds and extra soil to fill the garden. They looked at different gardens and designed what our garden should look like.

 

 I printed off every item they had added to the idea board and they made their own graph. They used the ipads to look up if each item came from a tree, bush, vine, flower, plant or grew underground. They worked on adding things for several weeks a little at a time. Every time they found out something grew on a tree they would moan because they knew we couldn't grow a tree before school gets out! We had a lot of fun looking up how all the different fruits and vegetables grew.

 Later, we looked at the graph and decided what was practical (what we could grow in a month to several months) and what was not practical (what would take a lot of months or years to grow). We reorganized our items in these categories. Our peas are pretty little, but doing it this way helped them understand the concept of time a little better. This gave us a realistic list of what we wanted to grow in our garden. Now we knew what seeds we needed to get!

Meanwhile, Ms. Amy's husband, Mr. Hillard, volunteered to build our raised garden bed!

 And here's a big thumbs up to Ms. Molly who let us save up requests for several weeks of supplies to get all the soil we needed. Thanks Ms. Molly!!

We decided we were going to start some of our seeds indoors before the garden bed came. We also learned about germinating seeds! Believe it or not, the peas, who are SO smart, started to look on the back of the seed packages to see how many days it took for certain seeds to germinate. They all wanted to choose the smallest number!

 They labeled their own peat moss pots and planted seeds.

 There was serious discussion about what to plant in each pot!

 

Here's two of the bags we germinated seeds in! These have already been relocated to the garden bed, but the peas really loved watching them break out of their seed coats and sprout. It is pretty amazing.

If you would like to watch a green bean germinating, here's a clip. I've seen it close to 100 times already and it's pretty incredible.

Here's some seedlings getting relocated to peat moss pots for planting.

After Mr. Hillard and Ms. Amy delivered the garden box, we still had to till up the dirt where we were going to be planting. The peas got to work digging and were fascinated by the fact that there were a ton of grubs. I was not so fascinated. Just gross.

 We also planted an herb garden behind our garden box. Here's all the seedlings that will go into the garden bed when it's ready.

Next, we planted!

We read some great books this week as we learned.  Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! was one of the best books we read all week. It gave so much information, Amy and I both loved it as much as the peas did.

We also studied seeds all week. The peas started to figure out that beans and nuts are seeds, too. We sorted and counted and patterned seeds.

 

We did a little artwork, too. We labled the parts of a flower and made a sunflower using our hands in Pre-K 1.

  

Pre-K 2 labeled a flower, too and they used real seeds in the center of theirs!

 During interactive writing, we discussed what plants have, need and give.

 

 The peas were really into germination and watching the seeds sprout, so both classes made seed bags to hang in the windows. We used all different seeds so we can observe and graph which ones germinate first, and how fast.

 

Ms. Amy read this favorite to both classes:

Then she did a shared morning message with them about where food grows. Isn't this adorable?

Afterwards, we ate the parts of a plant. Amy and I weren't too sure how they would like this activity, but it turns out they went crazy for it! They had second and third helpings of spinach, broccoli and carrots. A little ranch probably didn't hurt. :)

 Eating the parts of a plant!

Afterwards, Pre-K 1 graphed whether we liked to eat seeds.

We also had some fun sensory play. We added silk flowers to the sensory table for some flower shop fun.

 These were for me. I mean, best job ever, right?

We also had to plant grass heads. Ms. Amy had grass seed, we had soil, they're fun, so why not?

Lastly, we learned about compost. This book had some great information. The peas got really into the idea of composting. So much so in fact, that we now have...

A compost pile! There's a list on the back door of Pre-K 1 if you want to know what can go into the compost.

We had such an incredible week filled with fun and learning and the peas came back with more questions every day. I know they are so little, but they love doing projects on their own and when they love what they are doing, they are learning without even noticing. It's amazing. I'm sure you haven't heard the last of our gardening project, we'll keep you updated! Have a wonderful weekend.