Gardening Day = SUCCESS!!

Well, I have to say that I am so proud of my pumpkins today.  We had a gardening day where we stayed outside basically ALL DAY, and it was a wonderful success.  Another class and I set up the activity, and opened it to all the classes if they wanted to participate. And they did, so we had children from babies to age 5 out on the playground working and playing all morning.  Then the VPKers went out again after lunch for another activity with some volunteers from the Arboretum.  It was wonderful. 


We had stations all over the playground:   A planting station.  Children planted seeds, one to take home and at least one for the big garden we are going to plant next month.

A Reading Station:  We brought books out about gardening and read them in the gazebo.  Children could come and go as they wished.

 

 

An Art Station:  Paints were set up, children could choose their own colors and paint anything they wanted.  For inspiration, we had a still life of sunflowers handy...

 



A Writing Station:  Colored pencils and clipboards with paper were set out, as well as a lovely bouquet of daisies.  Children spent a lot of time at this station....

 

And of course, a WEEDING STATION:  Self explanatory.  Children helped us clean out our beds for new planting.

 

 

After lunch, we went back out and tried out some fruits in our own fruit trees.  Mulberries are just getting ripe so we tried those out.

 

 

The loquat trees are producing like crazy too, so we tried some of those, then planted the seeds we had left.  Maybe someday we will have an orchard on our playground!

 

 

As a little bonus, a pineapple that Ms. Amie planted almost FOUR YEARS AGO has a baby pineapple on it, so we visited that.  No one in our class has ever seen a baby pineapple on the plant before so this was pretty special....

 

 

I'm feeling like there are going to be more gardening days in our future.  And that makes me happy.