Wonderful Vegetables

It was so amazing to see how much the children's knowledge of vegetable had grown when we completed the "What I know about vegetables" benchmark data. 

It's just awesome to experience such enthusiasm about vegetables and see children so keen to eat green. 

Alex said, "I liked having the potatoes because I really like boiled potatoes. I tried kale for the first time and it was really nice with the salt, I was proud that I tried something even though I didn’t know what it tasted like. I am going to always try vegetables now."

It was fantastic to be able to link our inquiry to other curriculum areas and the cooking provided authentic experiences for writing recipes. 

Room 27 love kale. We cooked some kale chips to share with Room 2 as part of our handover to the Year 1s. The children were so proud to show the Year 1s their garden. They will always remember planting, nurturing, harvesting and enjoying their vegetables.

What a journey!

This year has been amazing! I - alongside with my children - have learnt so much about gardening and thoroughly enjoyed the organic, dynamic process in which learning about the garden happened. It was great to address issues as we went and the children have remembered all the things we did to help the garden!

We used our knowledge to produce a pamphlet to take home and share with our parents about how to care for a garden, and especially our kale. The kids were so keen to take their knowledge home.

One negative would have been the time constraints. It was hard to get a handle on cooking with so much else in the last term therefore did not do as much as I would have liked to. But other than that - Nothing!

Lots of positives on the other hand. The kids showed so much enthusiasm and care for the garden. I loved seeing the ones who previously were known as 'picky' eaters, or those who did not like veges at home transform into vege lovers! They were all extremely sad to hand over to year ones but said that they would like to see what happens with the gardens next and one of the great things were that they wanted to continue their learning and maybe find a way to share the veges from our garden with the whole school!

All the best to you next year - team! I look forward to keeping an eye on the blog and seeing what you are up to! My new class also has a vege garden! So watch out for international skype sessions etc! Thank goodness we have been on this journey this year! It'll sure help!

Our Gardening journey! on PhotoPeach

Enviro handovers

Well, the enviro handovers seem to be going smoothly. It was great to see this year's lot of children speaking about their learning and having so much pride in what they have achieved this year. We cleared out one of the garden beds today and I can see that we are going to have some very interested learners next year.

Handing over the gardens to Year 1 for 2015

Yesterday we invited Room 4 to come to Room 9 so we could talk to them about all the things we have been doing this year in our gardens and what we have learnt.  Then we all went out to the garden and helped pull out the old vegetables to make way for new planting next year.  The Year 1's are very excited about gardening!

We're famous!

The Eastern Courier visited and took photos and published an article about our hard work and the celebration lunch! Click here for the link

LUNCH TIME FOR ALL!

Our shared lunch was an amazing success!  The whole team pitched in - harvesting, washing, preparing, cooking and eating - healthy vege stirfry for 100 children! The children loved it and many ate different kinds of veges for the first time.  We had broad beans, kale, capsicum, spinach, broccoli,  cabbage and peas - it was great to use all the veges we have been raising this year.

One Potato, Two Potatoes, Potatoes Galore!

 One Potato, Two Potatoes, Potatoes More Please!

We learnt about all the different foods, healthy and unhealthy, that potatoes are used in and how they are harvested and brought to our shops. Then we harvested our own potatoes (in the rain) and made boiled and roast potatoes with different herbs to taste and share. 

We learnt that we eat the part of the potato that grows underground, called a tuber, and that potatoes have to be cooked to be eaten! Healthy potatoes can taste yummy and Room 27 published their tasty recipes on their portfolios so parents could try to cook these at home.

Harvesting our potatoes

 Skins on - very healthy!

Yummy! 

Which part of the potato plant do we eat?

Cooking galore

Well, this term is certainly marching on. Harvesting and cooking has been on everyone's mind-- teachers and students. It has brought into focus how hands on learning is the best kind, with students engaged and motivated throughout the process. The added benefit is that the students are carrying their enthusiasm home to their families. Parents are being 'encouraged' by their children to plant kale, amongst other vegetables. How cool is that!!

We are gearing up for a full scale shared lunch in a couple of week's time. Here are some photos of the harvesting and cooking so far.

         

Water!

The new challenge facing us is watering our garden over the summer. The nearest tap is quite a walk away for little children with heavy buckets of water so we are looking at getting a barrel connected to the rooftop and collecting rainwater for our garden.

Unexpected results!

We did not anticipate people asking if they could buy our produce! We sold some broccoli, parsley, spinach and spring onions to the Zumba ladies and a big bunch of kale to an RTLB visitor to the school - gold coin donations! We think we will put the money to the new summer planting! It is great to be able to share our produce and know that it is organic and healthy! I feel we have made a difference not only with our children but also the people who see our garden and think perhaps they might be able to grow something as well?

Snippets of student conversation

Some valuable snippets that were overheard today.

Samantha: What are you eating Mrs D?

Me: This is kale. Here, try some.

Lousianna: May I have some too?

Later on-

Samantha and Louisianna: We went and got some more kale to eat. We even gave some of the kale to Madison.

Madison: Yes. I put it in my wrap. It was delicious.

In addition to this, we had around 70 students devouring the spinach dip made by one class. When the bread and crackers ran out, they used whatever they had in their lunch boxes to polish up all the remaining dip. And, we have already had spinach smoothies. 

Vegetables are definitely the 'in' thing!!

Here are the children from one of the classes enjoying the dip. I'm sure more photos will follow.

First day of term 4

Term 4 has begun with a bang! The children were really excited and amazed to see how much the vegetables had grown and wanted to know if we could go and harvest straight away. Catherine experimented with having a give away table for excess grapefruit from home and they were all gone. So that was a success. We even have an enquiry if we would like to sell our parsley by the ladies that use our school hall twice a week for their zumba class. So, it looks like we will be organising parsley bundles soon.

Garden journey!

At first, I was a little apprehensive about doing gardening this past term! Having not much experience at all! However over the past term I have learnt soooo much along with my class about how to take care of the garden. We have loved so much watching it grow and tending to the needs of certain plants. I cannot get over how amazing it all looks and am so excited to get cracking on the cooking this term! First, spinach dip! Have looked up lots of recipes and should be amazing.

My own personal goal is to get the families as involved as I can and try and increase enthusiasm for gardening at home! I also can't wait to share the vegetables with the rest of the community as we look at next year.

New Challenges

Our vegetable gardens are looking amazing! This is inspite of the stormy Auckland weather over the past week. But this has brought in the forefront some more challenges for us. Vegetables do not follow school term times. So we have been faced with some vegetables ready for harvesting in the holidays. These will go to seed if we wait. We are having to harvest these vegetables, although ideally we would have liked the students to be part of the harvesting. The next challenge is going to be using all the produce. We are debating how we are going to set deal with this-- maybe send some vegetables home with the students or set up a swap table of some sort. Hmmm!! Lots to think about and next term is a short term!!

What an achievement!

This time last term, I was quite daunted by the prospect of all we had to go to get this project off the ground. We had been discussing it for ages and now it was time for some action. We were very lucky to have advice from our resident expert- Monica Miekle and of course Cate and together as a team we were able to make a start. We have had our challenges this term. At times it has been hard to keep on top of garden maintenance along with all the other classroom teacher tasks that we do. But overall, it has been a fantastic learning experience for the teachers and the children alike. The gardens recovered from the cold and the frost from earlier on in the term and are looking much more healthy.

Now it is almost time for the next exciting challenge along the way-- managing harvesting time!

Term 2 & 3 reflection

These 2 terms have been a big learning curve for teachers and children. We have learnt many new things about healthy food, gardening and growing vegetables. It has been exciting to watch the vegetables growing and flowering. It has been interesting to find ways of dealing with problems like slugs and snails eating our plants. We were proud to present our information to the whole school assembly about looking after our garden. We feel we have learnt and achieved a lot and are looking forward to harvesting and eating our vegetables next term.