Planting Zinnias

This was an ugly rainy week for most of the Kindergarten classes, but fortunately, we made it over to the garden! This week, Ms. Joni taught us how to plant Zinnia seeds in plastic cups.  They filled plastic cups with soil, used their two fingers to make a "peace sign" to put two holes in the soil, put two seeds in, and then covered them up.  Easy peasy!

We haven't been to the garden in 3 weeks because of the break and the plants had grown so much!  Ms. Joni sent some strawberries back with us to cut up and eat...they were delicious! :) 

Before we left a few rain drops got us, but thankfully the bottom didn't fall out until about 30 minutes later.  The kids really enjoy the garden and we are so thankful for Ms. Joni and Ms. Doris for always teaching us something new! 

The kids always seem to be more fascinated with the bugs than the plants, so when we get to worm week this group should have a blast! :)  

We will be studying all about plants this week coming up and I can't wait to show them a few really neat things with plants that will connect with what Ms. Joni has been teaching us!

Needs some plant activities?

We're using these fun centers in our room next week :)  What activities do you like to do with plants?

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.