Pre-blog, an overview of the spring 2011 garden experience...

This summer is my first major-ish gardening experience.  My director and I finally convinced the owner to add a raised bed to a portion of our playground.  We planted some lettuces, radish, spinach, cabbage, and cauliflower in the spring with pre-k, which was great.  However, I felt that we were just scratching the surface of potential.

A not-so-brief summary of the spring 2011 pre-k garden:

We had enough radishes for all to taste, and made a chart of likes vs. dislikes.  3 out of 20 kids asked for seconds and really liked them.  We also shared the lettuce at our end of the party, parents brought in addition salad ingredients.  The lettuce was...bitter.  I am guessing we should have harvested sooner. This provided math, social/emotional, and health/nutritional experience.

"Cabbage Whites" invaded our cabbage and cauliflower.  As I was inspecting our plants, I noticed holes chewed through many of the leaves and even the heads of some cabbage.  A closer inspection revealed green caterpillars along the veins of the leaves.  We were amazed at how well they were camouflaged... reinforcing a past vocabulary word, yay! A teachable moment!  Nothing like seeing an animal's natural defenses first hand! I cut the leaf from the plant that had 2 caterpillars on it, and let the kids explore the details using magnifying glasses.  

Not ever having a caterpillar/butterfly experience myself, AND not yet knowing what kind of caterpillar we had, I stuck the leaf and caterpillars in a small 'bug catcher/viewer' that we keep in our 'playground kit' and set it on a shelf in the science area of our classroom.  That evening, I googled (I can't believe 'googled' STILL shows up as a misspelling, even with a capital g!) "green caterpillar cabbage garden" and quickly found info and pics.  It will turn into a Cabbage White butterfly, cool!  In school the next day, I shared the info with the kids.

The kids were more worried about the cabbage than excited about the butterfly aspect.  Then it hit me,  "Well, we have a dilemma." I love using bigger words with kids, always provides an 'unintentional-to-them' teachable moment, lol.  I reminded the kids that we like butterflies for our garden because..."they spread pollen," a couple kids shout out.  Ok, so I know it's better to have them raise their hands, but hey, I was excited too.  So, I asked them what they thought we should do.  I didn't really know what to do either, so ha, why not let them decide?  Silence...wow...SILENCE!  They were thinking, really thinking.  It was one of those 'higher level/critical thinking' moments that we hear about in our teacher training and classes, encouraging us to use open ended questions, etc.

Now, I do feel the need to add something, for fear of creating a false image of ALL of my kids sitting in a perfect little "crisscross applesauce" circle.  I am sure some were thinking about what we were having for lunch, needing to take a shoe off, what would happen if they pulled that red lever by the back door, wanting their mommy, needing a band-aide for an invisible bruise, why is everyone so quiet, etc. 

Anyway, we decided to spray an organic insecticide on all but one cabbage, so the Cabbage Whites could have that one and we may still get to enjoy ours when they were ready.  What a great compromise and lesson in sharing :)  Plus, it offered us the opportunity to observe the effects.  Now, reflecting on what I now know about gardening, next time we will skip the spray, and I will encourage the kids to pick off the caterpillars and place them over the fence on the opposite side of the playground,  That's much more hands-on than me taking the 'keep away from children' yet still 'organic' spray out on a Friday afternoon after the kids have left to spray the plants.

Oh, and the caterpillars that we kept in the bug viewer!  Within 2 days the larger was spotted by a kid hanging from the top of the container in his 'chrysalis,' or what I was taught, in his cocoon.  Of course we had to read, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle, and they really did get fatter, just like the story!  The second one soon followed and we were able to successfully release them.  Who knew it would be that easy?!

This is an excellent example of why I detest doing lesson plans 1-2 weeks in advance...aside from being ADD. and a master procrastinator of paperwork, how can we maximize on our 'teachable moments' if we are tied down to the always demanded, must be posted, must be followed, must show evidence of...blah, blah, blah?  I have harnessed my ADD (to an extent) and have become a teacher with great flexibility...yeah, that's it, lol.

Sorry so long!  My laptop was stolen around the end of our spring gardening and had all the pics on it :(  Future posts will have pics. I love taking pictures, for the parents, documentations of learning, and  for my personal resume/portfolio.