Spring Garden Adventures #1 - Introductions

Today I teach the first session of a Garden Adventures program with two groups of Homeschool Club students, 5 - 8 years old.  We introduce ourselves and the Garden Adventures program. 
Students settle in, experimenting with microscopes to observe seed heads and insects.

Here's a butterfly wing!  You can even see the scales.

We then color butterflies exotic designs too.

Then we take time to make beautiful journal covers, by cutting and pasting photos from flower and vegetable catalogs.

We will use the journals for drawing, diagrams and reflection each week.

We read together the "I Like Bugs" poem by Margaret Wise Brown.
I love this poem.

Bugs! by Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrated by Carolyn Thomas

The simple rap appeals from pre-K to 5th grade, and sets the tone for respecting worms, pillbugs, grubs and other wildlife we'll find outside. 
We discuss "rules n' tools", other expectations for going outside as a class.

We go out to explore the Garden. It's a small courtyard garden managed by Master Gardeners with raised beds. Several students identify the Kale or Broccoli growing in the Vegetable Bed... 

...and take a photo of a raindrop on a leaf.

One student from each group identifies the Dogwood in bud - and tells me where another Dogwood like this grows in their neighborhood. We talk about the patterns of the Dogwood bud and flower.  Next week the Dogwood might be in flower?

On the way back to class, Ms Harrison from Parks and Recreation invites us to view the chicken eggs incubating! They will be hatching in 21 days or so...

Resources

Microscopes - Magiscopes

Next week's theme for Garden Adventures #2 is Soils

Nature: Observation, Drawing and Painting

Tiger Swallowtail - watercolor by Maya

My daughter came back from wildlife study camp today - with beautiful watercolors of butterflies she had caught and studied.  At first, she thought of making a booklet of the butterflies, but tomorrow she tells me she is going to make a mobile.

I'll post more pictures when her project is done.  It reminds of the beauty of taking time to slow down, to study and draw in the summer.

Also see the blog piece "Keen Observation" from the Junior Master Gardener's website contributor David Cain on observation and nature/plant journaling.  Maybe like you, I will be inspired, to make time and to get out some paper, the paint box and sharpen my pencils, and put the camera away for a day or two - and get outside and observe and draw!

Strawberry Fields Forever....Mulch, Observe and Journal

After a few weeks, the strawberries are growing in both beds and so are the weeds!  I note that in the bed that gets more sun - both weeds and strawberry plants are growing larger than in the shadier bed.

Already there are a few berries forming...

I notice a couple of half-ripe strawberries have been half-eaten by roly-poly's.  I decide to weed and then mulch the earth gaps between the strawberries: perhaps this will help keep down the weeds and keep the strawberry fruit off the earth so that they are less eaten by roly-poly's.  The bird netting is working to keep off the birds! 

"Do the strawberries need straw?"  I post the question to Master Gardeners and get plenty of responses: Some people advise straw in the fall, and then raking back the straw in the spring.  But now is the spring...
A colleague gives me a third of a bale of straw for free!
Another person recommends newspaper - it's cheap and works!
I decide to try - one bed with straw mulching...

and the other one with newspaper mulching.

Observe your own strawberry beds.  What's happening?
Here's some journal entries about strawberries from Arlington Traditional School students.  I'm observing and blogging..  



Next: let's harvest and look at the strawberries in more detail