DRYING, DRYING, DRYING, BANKING

Although the day started out with organizing our cubby which holds all our gardening supplies, today turned out to be an exciting day at the garden.  As of this morning I have an additional second grade class coming out during my shift.  These kids are of course just as amazing as my other second grade class I have routinely coming out Wednesday mornings.  We broke the ice with some seed banking facts and the kids got to   try it out for themselves by sifting through some dried okra to bag and label the seeds.  Having the kids take part in what we're teaching them is always a lot of fun.  It makes what they're learning real and the garden theirs when they get to participate in the various aspects of gardening.  Following the lesson and activity we played a revised version of duck-duck-goose to further explore the seed-banking concept and to have some fun!  The kids got in a circle and all the usual rules applied to the game.  The concept is what was different.  Rather than being 'ducks' the students were 'drying fruits', the 'ducker' was a 'farmer' and the 'cookie jar' was a 'banked seed.'  The kids really got into it and we all had a lot of fun while learning.  

Look how neat and organized our cubby is!

It's alive!  Its beautiful!  It's getting ready for the Harvest Festival coming up!