Another Wonderful Wednesday

Today was a great day! The first class we met with was the 3^rd grade EBD class. Catherine, Samantha and I were all freezing and concerned that the kids would not want to go outside... But, as soon as the kids saw us they all wanted to get out to the garden. To start things off we summarized a Magic School Bus book that talked about what plants need to grow.

We had to summarize the book because of the limited time we are able to spend with the kids. The whole class loved the book. During the story, we would stop to ask questions such as “what do you think plants eat? How do plants eat if they do not have mouths?” By the end of the story each kid could tell us that plants needed sunlight, air and water to grow and that with the sunlight, air and water, they made sugar. They also were able to look at the starters and guess why they had not grown that much. We ended the time with the 3^rd graders getting to eat some lettuce and dill.

The 5^th graders came out to the garden about 15 minutes after the 3^rd graders went back inside. This was a new group of 5^th graders so we started off asking them questions about what they knew. We were very impressed with what the class was able to tell us about plants. After introductions, we gave a tour of the garden. We talked about compost, contrasted the newly planted pineapple plants with the old ones, showed them aloe and let the class taste some of the plants. Everyone was very excited to be able to taste some of the plants. Towards the end of the time period, we gave the class the same worksheets the 5^th grade class worked on last week labeling plant parts and explaining their functions.

Even though it was a cold and windy day everyone had a wonderful time in the garden.