Spring 2011 Garden Activities

Well, Mother Nature played an April Fool’s joke on us! Snow on the first day of April. Forget spring showers...its spring snow storms for Ringwood, New Jersey! Here’s a summary of what the Peter Cooper Teachers have been up to! And a little ‘sneak preview’ of what’s planned going forward...

Kindergarten: Tulips and Pizza Garden. Yum!

Kindergarteners planted tulips this past fall, and now they are getting ready to greet visitors with a bright show of color and open arms, upon entering the school.

Ms. LaGreca and Mrs. Simoni’s classrooms went outside to observe the bulbs, wrote about their observations in their garden journals, and also did a math lesson with predictions of what colors the flowers will be when they open!

Along with the tulips the Kindergarten planted indoor herb gardens and will be making pizza next week (after spring break) with the herbs that they grew! Yum! Yum!

First Grade: St. Patrick’s Day Potatoes and the Three Sisters

First graders have been busy, busy, busy! For the month of March, ALL the first grades did potato taste testing in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. Mrs. Sicilian’s class tested french fries, plain pot chips, wavy, flavored, and plain boiled. They also made a little potato man.

Mrs. Cator’s class has also been exploring the potato unit. They talked about the potato famine in Ireland, to tie in to St. Patrick’s Day, and tasted different potato products. They then considered this question: “Would a sweet potato (yam) grow more vines and roots in water or soil?” Unfortunately after 2 weeks, there has been no growth. Some investigation turned up several suggestions for this result, and the class is modifying their experiment accordingly. Stay tuned to see what happens next!

First Grade (continued):

Mrs. Sicilian reports that all the first grade classes are getting ready to plant the Three Sisters Gardens – corn, beans and squash – in April. They will start the seeds indoors, then transplant them to the garden beds once the weather clears.

Second Grade: All Garden, All the Time!

In January, the second grades used problem solving and decision making skills to plan a pretend garden. Using a certain amount of money, they selected combinations of seed packets to buy. They used math skills of addition and subtraction. They also discussed how weather is important to planting seeds. Finally, they followed up in their gardening journals.

Come February, the students read the story of Fernando's Gift and learned about plants that grow in the rain forests of Central America. They identified products in their homes which were made from rain forest plants and also learned about the importance of protecting rain forests. In March, students learned the parts of a plant and the functions they serve. They identified the needs of living things, plant and animal adaptations to various habitats, and the effects of living things and natural forces on environments.

Photographs courtesy of Audrey Lidsky.

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