Lakewood Elementary Service Day!

http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1843936.jsp

Join us in spending the morning in our Lakewood Elementary schoolyard garden. The Junior League of St. Pete will be lending a big helping hand for this Service Day!

Saturday November 15th 2014 9AM-1PM

We take this time to catch up on garden maintenance and to finish larger projects so that our gardens are ready for the students who come out weekly to learn and explore.

Morning refreshments are provided.

Bring along your family, friends, and your gardening tools!

p.s. Bring along your compost-ables to donate to our compost bins(veggie and fruit scraps, oak leaves, coffee grounds, tea bags, BUT NO MEAT or DAIRY, please)!

Visit peacepatch.org for more info about our project.
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Keep an eye out for the addition of November and December service days!

Another Exciting Friday at Sanderlin IB
October 24,2014

The students become very excited when they were asked if they were ready to learn about bugs. We taught them the four main roles that bugs play including Garden Helpers, Pollinators, Decomposers and Pests. They learned why each of these roles is important for the garden while having fun.

 

 

They collected varies species of insects in the garden and placed them on the lids. They were fascinated by the number of bugs that exist. They learned a lot and they did not want to leave the garden.

 



Workday Weeding

As Dani already filled us in on; this week at Sanderlin our students had the day, off but we didn't! We came in to do some much needed maintenance.

We decided to start with the pineapple patch, and what a job that was. It took a few good passes to make sure we didn't leave any stragglers behind.

But we had a great time doing it and the pineapple patch is looking great!

We also had a sweet moment that reminded us how beautiful the garden truly is. We saw what appeared to be a drowned lizard in a bucket, but when we went to place him in an away location he moved! The little guy was holding on to life and we happened to be there at the right time to help him out. The garden can teach us, and our students, so much about life and how important it is to have hope and to always be kind to everything you encounter.

See you next time! MJ

Maintenance Time

Today the students had a day off because of a staff development day, but that didn't keep us out of the garden! I got to do a maintenance day with two other Eckerd College volunteers. All of the students in our groups are very excited to look at the pineapple part of the garden, but lately weeds had taken over. Naturally we decided to clean up this area first. While we were weeding we saw tons of bugs, which of course means good healthy soil! We also got to see a tiny little frog hopping between the different pineapple plants. It is exciting to see so much life in this school yard garden.

This picture is of the end of our hour long weeding process. MJ is finishing up the last few weeds that were trying to hide under the pineapple plants.

There was a half hour left of our time at the garden and we started to turn over the compost piles. It is surprisingly much harder than you would expect. After a half hour I was good and tired and didn't even get a whole pile over to the next bin. The compost was also full of little bugs. I saw a cockroach, a bunch of spiders and little beetles crawling all through this decomposing matter!

Sadly bugs weren't the only things found in the compost. There were a few plastic bags that got mixed in. It seems that they must have been blown in by the wind, luckily I think I found almost all of them in my pile and disposed of them.




Have a great week everyone!
Dani



      

Sanderlin Garden October 13, 2014

This week we learned about parts of plants! It was a nice breezy day when our first class of second graders at Sanderlin IB World School came out to learn about the garden. Once we divided up into our small groups, I asked the kids what parts of the plant they already knew. They knew them all! When I asked what their function was, it wasn't quite as easy- but after a quick, but knowledge filled, lesson we were off into the garden to find a plant for each group member. 

Here are my group members showing their plants!

Here one of our group members found some mysterious "eggs" on his plant!

After we found the perfect plant, I had them diagram their plants, and label each part and job.

We also found some caterpillar food!

Thanks guys!

Kendal Q

Root --> Stem --> Leaf --> Flower

This week in the garden we are talking about parts of the plant. My groups learned four parts of a plant that all (or almost all) plants have. These parts are, roots, stem, leafs and flowers. Each student in my group had a turn talking about a part of the flower and what the main function was, luckily I had four people per group so everyone got a turn to speak! After we talked about the parts of the flower and what they do we got to pick some weeds and look at real plants and their parts. 

Once students had plants in their hand they got very excited to show the parts of their plant and also tell differences their weed had compared to other students. All three of my groups really liked the roots and found it interesting the different styles of roots they saw. 

Lastly we went to the compost and quickly talked about what compost is and how it is effective in gardening. Over all the students were engaged and excited to share their knowledge about plants. 

We're moving along quickly here at Sanderlin! We planted radishes and beets just last week; learning about baby plants and safe growing conditions for our little seedlings. This week we learned about the parts of the plant. Hopefully we'll get to see them growing soon!

After learning what the four main parts of a plant are we walked around the garden seeing different plants and how the parts can look.

Our group was able to pick some weeds (bonus!) and use them to get an up close and personal view.

Some even tested the parts of the plants to see how they might work.

And we even got to see a tiny frog!