The planting begins. To start off, we decided to go with a combination of planting seeds and seedlings. We felt that some ‘instant’ plants would allow the children to begin to observe ‘growth’ immediately while they waited for their seeds to germinate. They marvelled at the size of the carrot seeds before sowing them and you could certainly sense their ‘disbelief’ that such a tiny little thing could ever become a carrot. To the children, this process must seem akin to ‘magic’. We introduced a lot of new terminology to the children as they worked, and through informal interactions we encouraged the children to think about what we would need to provide for our plants for them to grow successfully.
One child announced to his friends, “You know carrots are plants roots?” A reminder to us that children come to the opportunities that we provide for them with varying degrees of background knowledge, depending of course on their possible previous exposure. As adults, we must remind ourselves at times to listen more than we speak, gently guiding the children’s conversations in such a way that they feel their thoughts and personal knowledge are valued and worthy of sharing.
The children carefully planted the delicate seeds and seedlings…
… and watered them in.
They wrote up their own labels and tucked them into the soil.
With a little help, they created bamboo ‘tee-pees’ for their beans and snow pea plants to climb once the seeds have germinated.
Discussion relating to our climbing beans lead to one child remembering the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk”, so naturally we had to hunt this book out from our library to share with all of the children.
A day or so after planting, a highly distressed gardener discovered footprints in the garden bed. He was very concerned that the plants might get stepped on and die if the children continued to walked through the garden. So after some discussion with staff and his peers, he created this sign to let everybody know that there was to be…
“No walking in the Vegetable Garden“.
I think this garden bed is going to create an exciting learning journey for our children, full of wonder and surprise. So stay tuned in, we will certainly keep you informed of it’s progress!
Jack’s Reggio playgroup have a vegetable garden as an ongoing project. Just like your little people they planted seeds and seedlings. They inspect them eagerly each week to see how much they have grown. They are responsible for watering the plants and last week they staked the beans. It’s wonderful to have something like that to attend to each week. It’s a collaborative project with the kindergarten class. I know your kids will love it as much as these little guys do. I just hope it lasts the winter frosts. I’m looking forward to when we get our first yield 🙂
Kate it has been a fun journey already. I had to chuckle to myself one day as I questioned, “Mmmm… do you think they have grown?” One little girl immediately shot out her hand, pulled out a carrot seedling, inspected the roots and responded, “Nope, not yet!” and then pushed the seedling back into the soil. How precious! We then had a chat about how we look for growth ‘above ground’ rather than disturbing the plants roots!
On Monday we are going to make a scarecrow (children’s idea) so that will be a source of much enjoyment. Apparently our scarecrow has to have a really cross face in order to scare away the birds! I just hope it doesn’t scare away our 3 y.o. children! 🙂