Second Graders: Talk About Tools and Spring Clean Up

This afternoon is warm. The sun is shining and spring is in the air.
Second Grade are ready to go outdoors and do a “spring clean up” in the courtyard learning lab.

Talking about Tools

Why use tools in the garden? Tools are extensions of our senses and body. We could dig and trim plants with our hands and feet, but technology and tools such as rakes, trowels, leaf scoops, pruners, paper bags and microscopes can help us extend our capabilities in the same way as a pencil is a useful technology or tool for the task of writing and drawing.

We discuss tool safety.

Spring Clean Up

The students are in four groups assigned to different areas of the courtyard:

• Two groups rake up willow oak leaves and pick up sticks. They have two kinds of rakes, and leaf scoops. It's interesting to take turns with the tools and see how they help us with different tasks. The yellow leaf scoops are like dinosaur paws and the kids love using them!
  
• One group uses small pruners to trim buddleia bush back to 12 inches or so above soil, and to trim seedheads off asters and rosebushes, and to take dead growth off the mint and lambs ears. We "tidy up" the decomposing pumpkin. There's a lot of decisions to take when tidying up.
• Is tidying up necessary or not? 
• How much leaf litter do you leave for the worms? 
• How many seedheads should stay for food for the birds and other wildlife and for the plant to reproduce?
• Where is a good place to trim a plant?

These are all good questions for teaching best management practices and stewardship.

• Another group uses trowels to weed the “Three B’s: Birds, Bees and Butterflies Pollinator Garden”. Try out different kinds of trowel. Which works best? This bed is full of common milkweed that we are cultivating as a food plant for monarch caterpillars and a nectar plant for many insects and butterflies. With the goal of increasing biodiversity and lengthening the flowering season from spring to fall in this sunny bed, we’ll plant additional vigorous native flowering plants such as rudbeckia, coneflower, mountain mint and goldenrod. At the moment the bed is covered in hairy bittercress, speedwell and mugwort. These weeds very successfully reproduce and spread. The hairy bittercress can propel its seeds 10 foot from the mother plant. These “weed” plants occupy space and take light and nutrients from native plants we are choosing to cultivate. So we are deciding to weed some of them out.

Outputs and Reflections

In one hour the second grade students fill 9 large bags full of organic debris.

This is an enormous amount of work done.  25 students at one hour each is 25 person hours. That would be two weeks of my part-time job here.

• The students compare the different kinds of rake. Which one worked best with the fine willow oak leaves?
• The students loved the extended power and aesthetics of the bright yellow “dinosaur paw” leaf scoops
• Students learned to use pruners safely - point down and using safety catches
• Students learned to identify plants and learned some management practices
• Students found and identified worms, ants, and grubs
• Students learned about waste management and composting issues

We cannot compost on site at the moment. So we choose to throw out the waste with the school trash.  We are working towards some on-site demo composting in the courtyard.  But the reality of gardening in this large courtyard is that we will have too much organic debris each year to compost entirely within the courtyard.  My goal over the next few years is to a) demonstrate on-site composting in a small way and to b) do larger scale on-site composting in bin system and c) also to continue to take waste out of the courtyard.  At the same time we need to be careful to manage for replenishing nutrients in the soil and keep a focus on healthy soil and a healthy ecosystem.

In addition of course there was the more extensive and unpredictable experience of discovery and outdoor learning. A hawk has caught and eaten a junco and students found some remaining feathers. Other students found milkweed seedpods and even some willow oak leaves that were sprayed gold!

All good evidence of the rich learning environment in our courtyard and the value of time outdoors.

The second graders made a significant contribution to the well-being of the courtyard with an hour of “service-learning”. At the same time they are fulfilling Standards of Learning (and NGSS) as we learn about scientific method, life systems, and stewardship issues. The students practice collaborative teamwork as we go too.

Thank you to the parents helping facilitate this session with the Ms Payack’s class.

Resources
Leaf scoops by Gardex Pruners Trowels Weed Identification for Schools by Mary Van Dyke, Green STEM Learning, online and downloadable