Community Garden

We are really blessed to have an opportunity to visit a Community Garden across the street from our school.  This initiative started as a grant a few years ago and only a few classes were able to go, but now all the Kindergarten classes go once a week to the garden.  It's an inter-generational thing, so there are seniors there volunteering to work with our little guys.  I am not a gardener in the least, so I learn something every time we go!

This is what the Welcome Garden looks like when it's all grown.  It doesn't look like this just yet :) 

Every week when we go, our wonderful Master Gardener Ms. Joni has something planned for us to do and then there is a volunteer as well.  We break into 2 groups and do 2 activities and then we switch and do the other activity.  We do things like weed, plant, water etc.  The students learn about worms, the compost bin and they take a tour of the garden every week so they get to see how everything is growing every time.  It's really a great experience.

 Looking at plant parts (flowers) with magnifying glasses.

 Here they learned about how the bugs eat up the plants and using things other than chemicals to kill them.  Ms. Joni talked to them about hand picking them and putting them in soapy water, but they were petting it first.

 Checking out the strawberries and how much they have grown.