Salsa Success!

Primary concluded the year with some successful salsa ingredients!

As shown below, we will soon have tomatoes and bell peppers galore. 

After months of patience and hard work, Ms. Carter's class grew tomato and pepper plants that will be ready for harvesting this summer. As explained in the End Of Year presentation, the adequate watering and direct sunlight in her room provided these plants with an ideal environment. 

Other primary classes were also successful growing in their classrooms and in the Primary flowerbed. While chives and cilantro were not as successful as the main salsa ingredients, the Primary students learned all about how to grow successful (and unsuccessful) plants through our Project Based Learning. 

Bell Peppers (above)

Tomatoes (above)

Let the fiesta begin!

End of the Year 5th grade

Our garden club celebrated the end of the year with a small morning feast.  Everything we ate came from the earth.  Black bean salsa with corn, tomato, pepper, onion, chiles, avocado, and seasoned with lime juice, olive oil, cumin, and cilantro.  We had veggie pizza seasoned with basil from our herb garden and a salad with romaine and green leaf lettuce.  This lettuce and basil began in our aquaponics towers and was then transplanted outside when the weather was nice.  We found that it grew quickly with the rain we had.

Cucumbers from our garden were served at the 5th grade end of year pizza party. (We needed something healthy to go with the chips and soda!)  Our tomato plants will be ready to harvest from soon.  Students continued to pick a mint sprig, chive or sage if they like spicy, as they went out to recess.  The honeysuckle on the playground was also enjoyed by all during the month of May.  We love seeing our children excited about the wonders that come from the earth.  Each year we teach that you can eat some things right out of the ground without fear.  All of our things are grown organically, mulched with newspaper to reduce weeds and pests.

As a final project, each 5th grade class built a bat box, each with the capacity to hold a large colony of bats.  This was our idea to help with mosquito control in an environmentally conscious way.  Students in math class looked at plans and figured out how much wood we had to buy.  We measured and cut lumber then put it together with a power drill.  They loved this part!  Some students were involved with staining the boxes to protect them from weather.  We will work on hanging these next school year.  Bats usually look for these in early spring. 

It has been a great year working with aquaponics, gardening inside, and garden club, gardening outside.  We see the value of organically grown food and the myriad ways food can be prepared in delicious ways using herbs and spices.  We have laughed over honeysuckle nectar and herbs to clean the palate or refresh our senses.  And finally, we enjoyed building something to help our animal neighbors that help us in return.

Happy Summer!

Horray for Painted Lady Butterflies! End of the Year-Second Grade

End of the Year-Second Grade
We enjoyed caring for our caterpillars this quarter. We watched them as they turned into a chrysalis. We were excited to see them transform into beautiful butterflies! Our painted lady butterflies even laid beautiful, tiny, blue eggs. The life cycle began again. We compared animal life cycles to plant life cycles as our culminating project. We enjoyed sharing our life cycle books with parents during our end of the year breakfast. It was a fun filled day. This year has been terrific. Our students have a great understanding of what plants need to grow, can compare and contrast different growing methods (i.e. hydroponics), and describe the interdependence between animal life cycles and plant life cycles. It is our hope that their knowledge will continue to deepen in the years to come.

Well, the polls show that third graders LOVED our plant growth and development unit.  They were so engaged in watching our broccoli grow and smelling it along the way.  We can't wait to experience it all over again with our new third graders next year!  Have a wonderful summer everyone.

Check out our 4th grade BLUEBIRD houses!

Please click on the link below to view the 4th grade bluebird presentation:)


Bluebird Houses!