October 14th Pre-K's First Adventure in the Garden

Last Thursday Ms Liz's wonderful Pre-K class had a great time exploring the garden at Sanderlin. We first asked the students what they think some garden rules might be. They hit the nail on the head with rules like "No kicking the plants" and "Don't eat the soil".  After we had outlined the safety guidelines we split up into three groups to learn about soil! 

The students sampled soil from the field, the garden beds, and the mulch pile and observed the differences in each. They noticed soil from the field was dry and sandy while soil from the mulch was dark and moist. We learned that plants usually prefer the darker wetter soil to grow in and that led us to talk about compost. 

The students learned how important compost is for the plants. After a brief explanation I asked again what compost is and one student yelled out, "old food!" and that led us into a conversation on the usefulness of "old food".

We learned that water collects nutrients from the soil and is then absorbed by the plants, just like when we eat a smoothie, the water is filled with vitamins that help us grow. To this one student remarked, "We're just like the plants!" 

At the end of the lesson we picked some beautiful bananas and brought them to Ms Liz's class for them to ripen and be enjoyed by everyone.