Gardening with Kindergarteners!

With the growing success of our school garden, this year we are beginning something new!  One of my missions has always been to get more students into and using the garden. After spending the day last fall at PS 216, an Edible Schoolyard demonstration school, I thought the Edible Schoolyard curriculum would be an exciting program for our school!

First we used four of our senses to explore the garden.  The classes drew a picture of something they saw, smelled, felt and heard in the garden.

Some of the classes noticed the plants in the garden are starting
to look a little wilted!

The next time we went out to the garden, we learned about the different tools that we use to help keep the garden healthy!

The cultivator or claw helps loosen the soil.

Watering cans help us water all parts of the garden!

When using the rake, we have to be careful. 
They are big!

Placing the leaves in the wheelbarrow
so we can bring them over to the compost bin.

Most recently, we have been talking about harvesting vegetables from our garden.  How do we know if something is ripe or not?  Why would we weight our vegetables?  We made different combinations on the balance scales to see which vegetables were heavy and which vegetables were light.