In the Garden

 It's been a busy fall season so far.  We've settle our classrooms and been doing lots of work focusing on our outside classroom.   This is a particularly love;y time of the year to teach the children about plant life cycles and seeds.  I especially love doing seed collecting with the children.  I am always really fascinated by the children and their natural curiosity with their outside world.  I've been longing to do some work outside in the garden and when we planted our garden space four years ago I dreamed about how we would use it as a natural extension of our inside classrooms.

This spring we planted alot of things that would go to seed.  I wanted to be able to teach the children about what happens to the plant at the end of it's life cycle and why things are yellow and going to seed.  I talked about how our garden is getting ready to go to sleep for the winter and what we can do to help that along.  

Sunflower Seed heads 

 Before the tropical storm I went out and harvested the Sunflower seed heads to dry on my dehydrator.  We will be taking these apart at a work station with tweezers as part of our seed collecting work.

 Melanie was able to just pop outside with her group and explore the garden and my group hopped on the bus to visit the garden at our Quinpool Campus.  Both groups were able to harvest some of the last veggies and flowers from the garden.  we picked alot of tiny yummy carrots and looked at the seeds inside a bean pod and tomato plant.

 We also looked at flowers in the garden and how some of them have left seeds behind to grow new flowers for next year like the day lilies.

Lily Seed pod with tiny black seeds in Michelle's hand.

Harvesting Carrots 

We tasted nasturtiums and talked about how some people really enjoy those in their salad as they have a peppery taste.

All through our garden walk and exploration we also collected.  not just seeds and seed pods but different clippings of plants and leaves so that we could do some comparing with the botany cabinet.

Both Melanie and I took this opportunity to do some nature journaling with our second year children.  Her children worked in their project books to record their work and my group are making nature journals. I want to have a space where children can continue to draw and record their observations of their natural environment.

Nature Journaling (Tomato plant)

Nature Table Collection

 We have worked really hard this year to inspire the children by keeping a nature table in our classrooms.  The children are able to spend quiet time at these tables exploring what is there with a magnify glass and their hands.  I love how this space works in our classrooms and how drawn the children are to it.  I know it will be a quieter space come winter and that is ok.  But for right now, it is a lush space with all that is left of our growing season and for that I feel immensely happy and grateful for all that Mother Nature gives us.

Classroom Nature Table

Parts of the Leaf

Parts of the Leaf

Parts of an Apple