Monday morning we harvested our big pumpkin out of the Kindergarten box. We had a school-wide contest to guess the weight of the pumpkin, and little did they know, but it was actually a math lesson in estimation and comparison! Kids had access to a stack of bricks and knew that each brick weighed about 5 pounds. So tons of kids came out and got creative while making their guesses. After school, my kids helped me do the official pumpkin weigh-in. It was....drumroll.....19 pounds! We had five winners who guessed closest to the correct weight:
Grant in Mrs. O'Beirne's class
Parker in Mrs. Grant's class
Kate in Mrs. Hansen/Mrs. Smyth's class
Avi in Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class
and the closest guess was Toby in Mrs. Harms' class, guessing 18.4 pounds.
Congratulations Hawks and thanks to everyone for participating! Prizes of gift bags with a small plant, some seeds, and a gift certificate were handed out to the winners in the office. It was a fun exercise and neat to see the students' brains cranking!
Our monarch caterpillars keep hatching and munching on the milkweed. We have 5 in our butterfly house now and love watching them do their thing! We thought one crawled out of the enclosure and that we lost it, but lo and behold, it had turned into a chrysalis on the side of a pot! Unfortunately it got a little dent, probably because we didn't see it, but hopefully it will be fine and turn into a black and orange beauty.
On Tuesday, Ms. Bruinix's 1st through 3rd grade critical skills kids came out into the garden for a lesson on observations. They learned about life cycles, plant parts, did a worksheet scavenger hunt, and learned about bugs at the bug station. They were so sweet and excited to be gardeners for a morning!
It's the last day of school! We had some recess visitors come out to see the sunflowers one last time, we said goodbye to the amazing 5th graders (sniff, sniff!), and we had one last observation session with Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd grade class. It was a great way to end a great school year.
Happy Summer Everyone!!!
Week of 5/30 - 6/3/16
The sunflowers are blooming just in time for the kids to enjoy before school gets out. It's been fun to see the kids marvel at the flowerheads' size. And I guess we're a bona fide garden now because we have our first resident rodent! A ground squirrel seems to have dug a tunnel under one of our new boxes and probably is the culprit who nibbled some of our potted flowers. We will look into some natural remedies to send this guy running.
!
Ms. O'Beirne's kindergartners came out to the garden with volunteer mom Leah Caswell, and did a lesson on worms. We had a worm worksheet at station 1, learned about vermicomposting at station 2 (worm quiz and questions, why we like them in our garden, fun facts, and then seeing them in action), and had a wormy reading and writing session at station 3. They read Wiggling Worms, and then practiced writing the word "worm" with a popsicle stick in a shallow box of dirt, digging for the letters just like a worm! On their way out, they got a special treat: a gummy worm! It was a sweet morning!
Thursday Ms. Westmoreland's class came out to harvest their rainbow chard to sell at the Farmer's Market the next day. They also rotated through a bug observation station and a book station where they were able to read about all things gardening! These kids were just so enthusiastic!
Friday we celebrated National Garden Week with the generous support of the Poway Valley Garden Club. Roy Wilburn, co-President, brought bountiful produce, including the first batches of zucchini and tomatoes of the season, and set up a Farmer's Market to collect donations from parents on campus for the Fitness Club awards ceremony. He was instrumental in promoting gardening to our school families and showed children how to harvest edible flowers and veggies from our garden. It was cute hearing them describe their home gardens and what their future plans were. This was a great learning event and earned the Hawks Health Garden a good chunk of change to keep the garden going! Thank you to Poway Valley Garden Club for kicking off National Garden Week successfully, to the parents, teachers, and employees for supporting the Farmer's Market, and to the Garden Corps volunteers Anna Araujo-Anderson and Subbu Ganapathy for helping run the market. It takes a village!
And after our farmer's market, a sweet group of 5th graders came in to take care of the monarchs and go butterfly and caterpillar hunting with me. There were tons of Mourning Cloak caterpillars on the buddleia bush in the courtyard, so some kids brought butterfly houses to take them home over the summer and see the life cycle up close in person!
Awesome volunteers Bruce McCoy, Mark Devlin and Steve Hall came out over the weekend to install a drip system all over the hillside for our flowers for the pollinators. Now we can grow some colorful, fragrant bushes perfect for butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. Then the following weekend Bruce and Mark finished up the drip systems to the boxes, and later Mark generously installed a line along the chainlink fence side of our garden for the sunflowers and other future plantings. Thank you men!! What a job!
We had a nice write-up in the 92064 Magazine about the Chaparral garden in connection with Poway Valley Garden Club. They highlighted our booth at the Flower Show and did a nice job of promoting school gardens in the area. There was also a great article about school gardens in the local newspapers The RB Journal and The Poway Chieftan. We hope this buzz helps get more schools involved with gardening and teaching about nature and nutrition.
Only a few more days until school is out! Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Week of 5/21 - 5/27/16
The weekend of May 21st was special because it was the awards ceremony for the California Garden Clubs Inc youth contests. We had many winners from the various categories - Luke Stravasnik, Jackson Foisie, Avijit Dhindas - two of whom went to the luncheon ceremony in Irvine: Elliot Kohn and Jacob Spooner. It was a great day and wonderful for these sporty boys to be celebrated for their artistic, gardening side! We took home the potted centerpieces too, and found a nice fat Monarch caterpillar on our milkweed flower...bonus! See the home page for the winning categories.
On Monday May 23rd, Sabin's class came out to learn about pollinators. We had a station up front where kids were able to buzz around like bees and learned all about pollen, we did a bug hunt, we decorated clothespins like caterpillars, and we planted Orach spinach seeds in the 1st grade box. Then we had some recess helpers come out to help in the garden and to harvest cilantro seeds, also known as coriander. What a nice way to start the week!
Volunteer Mark Devlin putting in driplines to our new beds
A monarch caterpillar turning into a chrysalis
The gladiolas from last year are coming up nicely!
On the 26th, Ms. Voorhees and her TKers came out to do a lesson on worms with wonderful parents Shauna Smith and Nichele McCague. Not only did we look at worms and learn about how they help our garden, but we did some worksheets and read a great worm book! It was such a fun morning.
Some wonderful helpers came out at recess from Mrs. Higgins' class, and then Mr. Carson's 3rd graders with Shauna Young followed to do a pollination lesson. See this cute video of their buzzing bee station. They did observation sheets in the garden, and painted pots with seeds of pollinating flowers in them too. It was a fun day learning about pollination!
On Friday May 27th, many garden volunteers and I attended the Chaparral Volunteer Breakfast. It was a lovely morning of camaraderie with the teachers and other volunteers where we were able to celebrate the fun work we did this year. Thank you to everyone for hosting this and to volunteers for all of their time. It couldn't be done without all of us working together!
L-R: Joelle Kohn, Anna Araujo-Anderson, Nancy Bellinghiere Hall, Subbu Ganapathy, Roy Wilburn
Following the breakfast, we went out to the Community Gathering. We called our CGCI contest winner students up to collect their prizes. It was heart-warming to hear the applause and see their proud faces as they marched up to the podium. And what a memorable morning, as afterwards I was brought up to receive the Volunteer of the Year Award and the PTA Golden Oak Service Award. I was surprised and very, very honored. It has been such a privilege to teach your children about gardening and nature, and truly is my happy place. So thank you to everyone for the vote of recognition. My heart is full! It has been such a fun year!
Jackson Foisie, Avijit Dhindas, Jacob Spooner, Luke Stravasnik, Elliot Kohn
Thank you for the honor of Volunteer of the Year and the Golden Oak Service Award!
To wrap up our week, Ms. Santomauro's class came out to tour the garden and plant some pumpkin seeds. They were awesome gardeners and got to point out all of the cool things to see in the garden. They loved the bugs, sunflowers, pumpkins and nasturtiums that were growing. We can't wait to see how their seeds come up!
And last but not least, our helpers came out during recess to partake in some more garden fun! We had a blast readying the boxes with dirt, checking out bugs, pruning, harvesting, and discovering nasturtium flowers. It was a gorgeous, fun day!
5th grader Matthew Morga showing kids the ways of monarchs!
Week of 5/16 - 5/20/16
A group of brawny, brainy, garden-loving volunteers met at the garden to build two more raised beds. I picked up all of the lumber at the Home Depot. They gave us wonderful discounts as part of their community outreach program, so many thanks to the Home Depot! Once I delivered the wood and hardware, Kevin Partain, Lisa Partain, their friend Frederick, Bruce McCoy, and Ed Dalati all got right to work and put together our beautiful new redwood beds. The humongous donation of bags of soil from Kellogg Garden Products filled up our wonderful boxes too. They look great and these guys are rock stars for putting it all together! The garden thanks you!
Lisa Partain planting our peach tree
Monday Mrs. Voorhees brought out her TK-ers to release some painted lady butterflies that they raised from the time they were tiny caterpillars. They had a blast watching them climb onto buckwheat flowers and get ready for flight. These were some of the first residents of our pollinator garden!
Recess helpers were a'plenty this week and it was busy and buzzing! Huge thank you to Kellogg Garden Products for the soil donation. The kids loved tearing into these bags and dumping them in!
Measuring our giant grey sunflowers
Wednesday Ms. O'Beirne's kindergartners came out to learn all about butterflies. We had a couple good stations for them to understand the butterfly life cycle, some good nutrition with tastings, and even let them do independent observations.
And we had a good crew of recess helpers Wednesday. They pruned like professionals!
Trying to reach the top of the sunflowers
Mr. Rinehart's 3rd graders came out Friday to plant some beans amongst the nasturtium and radishes. They rotated through to the thumbprint bug station and made cute pots with pollinator flower seeds planted in them. Then they learned about the butterfly life cycle with our tried and true pasta lesson.
The 5th graders in Mr. Voorhees class came out as the last lesson of the week and learned about monarch migration patterns, life cycle, conservation, pollination of squash plants with their male and female flowers, and they made some cute pots with pollinator flower seeds planted in them. I can't believe these kiddos are going on to middle school and this will be their last garden lesson! =sniff, sniff=
Week of 5/9 - 5/13/16
A week or two ago, my little one found a cool black-striped spiky caterpillar crawling down our willow tree. We put it in a butterfly house and gave it to Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's Room 44 to take care of. It turned into a chrysalis the next day and hung around for a while. Then - surprise! - it emerged as a Mourning Cloak butterfly and was named Friday! We went out and performed a butterfly release on Monday and had fun watching it hang out, pump its wings, get warm, and then fly away. Our first hand-raised pollinator!
Click to watch video
Click to watch "Frida" fly
Discussing butterflies
Tuesday morning brought out many recess helpers, who watered, mixed, plucked, clipped, and then were rewarded by harvesting and snacking on some blueberries! There was also a gaggle of cute kindergartners who were building a little habitat for our chaparral-living critters on the hillside!
Mr. Voorhees' 5th graders along with Kinga Pocsveiler came out on Tuesday and harvest the last of the snow peas and sugar snap peas. They observed how those grown in compost had other plants grown from seeds competing for space and soil elements. The best growers may have been those with chicken fertilizer mixed in. Official results still pending! But they had fun learning and then pulling out the plants when they were done.
Thursday the garden set up a table for Arts at Dark. Kids drew designs on tiles for a future table top in the garden, and also painted pretty watercolored greeting cards. Some pieces were taken home, some were turned into Father's Day cards and tucked away as surprises, and others were donated back to the garden. We all had fun! Barons Market also came out and set up a wonderful Farmer's Market booth of organic produce. The manager went to Chaparral back in the 80's, so it was fun for him to come back to the campus and visit with other Hawks. Barons generously donated all proceeds back to the garden. Thank you!
Week of 5/2 - 5/6/16
Here is what has been growing: springtime flowers and the start of summer veggies!
Three Sisters
Pollinators love herbs
Succulents blossoming
Sunflowers 3-4 ft tall
Snow pea blossoms
Rainbow chard
Tuesday I had some 5th grade visitors come through the garden to help, look for bugs, and do an interview! Hayden Li and Toby Kohn - my boy - had lots of good questions to ask me for Mrs. Harms' class newsletter. We had a great time!
They named this inchworm Donald Trump!
American Painted Lady
On Wednesday May 4th, Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's third graders came out to plant a different variety of radish seeds - white icicle, Easter Egg, and red cherry - within different types of soils as an experiment. They rotated to harvest lupine seeds from the bushes saved from the front of our school, and to plant the painted pots with their sweet pea seedlings.
The rest of the week we watched fun things blooming and hatching. The gladiolas Nancy's class planted last year came back and are looking great!
Week of 4/25 - 4/29/16
Monday April 25th started our butterfly week off with a bang! Mrs. Chambers’ and Ms. Westmoreland’s 2nd grade classes came out with volunteers Anna Araujo and Subbu Ganapathy and learned about the butterfly life cycle. They did a cute craft using differently-shaped pasta to represent the metamorphosis phases, walked through the garden on their bug hunt, did observations of the caterpillars and cocoons in our butterfly houses, saw our jars full of ladybugs, and finally ended with nutrition while reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They ate through all of the healthy foods that the caterpillar eats through, and leaned why fruits and vegetables are more nutritious than junk food.
Many recess visitors came out Monday to see our bugs and blooms. They were so darn excited to buzz around the garden and help!
My 10-year old Toby, measuring up to a sunflower!
Tuesday was another butterfly type of day. Mrs. Nishiguchi’s Kindergartners visited the garden with Shawna Kirpalani and Lisa Partain, and went through our pasta craft station, our bug hunt station, and our Very Hungry Caterpillar nutrition station. These kindergartners also planted seedlings of green bell peppers in the K bed. They learned how to carefully hold their junior plants, how to tickle the roots to help them grow, and how to tuck their roots in under the newly amended and mixed soil. It was a cute thing to see. We can’t wait for our peppers to grow!
Watching the ladybugs
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall’s class was brought out afterwards with Allison Harris. These 3rd graders planted up a section of their raised bed with cherry red, Easter Egg, and White Icicle radish seeds. They will compare their growth with that of the radish seeds they planted in trays last week. They amended the soil in three different ways, so will do their experiment to see which grows best. Mrs. Harris ran a craft station decorating pots for Mother's Day. Then these smarties learned about nutrition, pollination, and conservation by way of The Very Hungry Caterpillar book. We talked about how they Monarch butterfly population is decreasing due to deforestation in Mexico, where they migrate, and due to loss of native milkweed in California from construction and urbanization. They are excited to help plant up our milkweed in our pollinator garden. Just waiting on those sprinklers!
Farmer Roy paid Chaparral a visit while this class was out in the garden, and for Arbor Day, the care facility for which he works, Sunshine Care, donated a native Strawberry Tree to our garden for our pollinator hillside. This tree will grow nicely and put out pretty blossoms and even fruit for our pollinators. So a big thank you goes out to Farmer Roy and Sunshine Care for Arbor Day!
Mrs. Dwyer and Bruce McCoy came out into the garden that afternoon and did a lesson on leaves. These kids worked on a leaf worksheet and might even be able to tell you the difference between a monocot and a dicot leaf! Then they rotated through the garden and did a harvesting station, where they pulled out their microgreens from about a month ago. They discussed plant parts: leaves, stems and roots – and chopped and washed them properly. And while some were harvesting, others were observing the bugs in our bug houses. Caterpillars, an empty chrysalis, a full chrysalis, and a moth cocoon were big hits. They especially loved the ladybugs and learned all about their life cycles too – larva to pupa to full grown beetle! At the end, we took all of our harvested goods and made a class salad to taste. There’s nothing better than to see kids eating greens, in this mom’s eyes!
Wednesday Mrs. Baird brought her 2nd graders out with Nichele McCague and rotated through our butterfly stations. They couldn’t decide which activity was the favorite: playing with glue and dried pasta, discovering ladybugs on our kale and sunflowers, or tasting apples, pears, strawberries and oranges just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was an exciting day and so sweet to get lots of thank-yous and compliments from these polite kiddos.
Thursday I left for a vacation (I am actually writing this on my laptop on a plane!), but the plan is for Bruce McCoy to take Mrs. Higgins’ class out with Dahlia Shalal to do our butterfly stations and to transplant some zinnia seedlings into bigger pots. We hope that they have a wonderful day of learning in the garden. If Bruce’s track record plays into it, the lesson will go swimmingly!
Friday will be our Community Gathering. I believe the bottle cap mural will be unveiled to all of the students, our tree donation will be mentioned because it is Arbor Day, and our Busy Bee Award will be given out to 5th grader Matthew Morga, an uber-enthusiastic student who comes to help me in the garden nearly every day. This boy has “gardener” written all over!
Hope everyone has a great weekend. I will be sure to check out the Garden District of New Orleans and come back with some good pictures to post. I’ll see you back in the garden on Monday!
Week of 4/18 - 4/22/16
Back to school, there was lots to see in the garden. The squash seeds that Mrs. Harms' class planted have popped, and the award-winning snap peas grew huge and had to be staked back even more to make room for their next-door neighbors the sunflowers. And our blueberries are starting to ripen. Kate Garver was my first recess helper to show up, so she got the honor of tasting the first blueberry. We got a thumbs-up!
Monday many more recess helpers came out to do chores. Mrs. Bellingheire Hall's class also came out to do some observations and see what grew.
Tuesday was my day to schedule lessons, plan the garden, and take care of my post-op newly-neutered dog! So I missed the action of PUSD coming and installing two new irrigation valves and a line to a new hose bib for the back of the garden. It was so great to come back and see the work that had been done! The irrigation is helping us get ready for out new raised beds, our pollinator garden, and our native trail.
Wednesday Mrs. Sevilla's first graders came out with Ivy Bruhn, Kathleen Boyer and Sandra Giamie and started our Spring butterfly section off with a bang! They learned about a butterfly's life cycle with a book and a cute craft, then they took turns reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and taste-testing all of the fruits and veggies he ate and learning about their nutrition. Finally they harvested a bunch of their sugar snap peas and enjoyed tasting the fruits of their labor!
As Sevilla marched out, Sabin marched in. We replanted some sunflowers where we think birds chomped them last time, as well as learned about The Very Hungry Caterpillar nutrition, and did our pasta butterfly life cycle craft. It was another successful rotation.
On Wednesday after our lesson with Sabin, three sweet kindergartners ran over from their recess and brought ladybugs that they had caught into the garden. We talked about how this is a beneficial bug in the garden, that they eat aphids, and decided to release it on the 2nd graders’ kale plants who have some aphids on the undersides of their leaves. They were very excited and very complimentary of the garden. It was just about the cutest thing ever!
Ms. Lewis sent about half of her class out into the garden to plant up a section of the 5th grade bed with tomatoes, most of which were donated by Farmer Roy of Sunshine Care. We now have some Lemon Boys, a variety that puts out nice big yellow tomatoes, and Black Cherries, a dark cherry tomato. We’re excited to see how they grow. These kids learned about transplanting with peat pots and how to deal with root-bound plants. We made some quick butterfly nets out of recycled grocery bags in honor of Earth Day and tried to catch some cabbage moths to study. These moths keep flying to our brassicas and laying eggs, creating those cabbage worms that eat holes in our kale. We had no luck catching any, but we had fun running around!
On Thursday the 21st, Ms. Higgins’ 2nd graders came out with Bruce McCoy and planted some marigold seeds in the corners of each raised bed. They were able to harvest some seeds from old deadheaded flowers and chose their spots to sprinkle the seeds of these beneficial flowers. Marigolds give off chemicals that keep bad garden bugs at bay, so they had fun knowing they were helping the garden grow. Another highlight of their session was observing a red ant carrying off a spider carcass. Lots of oohs and aahs could be heard at that moment!
Red ant carrying dead spider!
Friday was Earth Day and the garden set up a table in front of the school with backyard rose bouquets in mason jars, some backyard oranges and lemons, and the greeting cards and seed packets handmade by the kids for fundraising. Families generously donated, and we made over $100 to go back into garden supplies. Thank you Hawks!
During the PTA meeting our sister program, Hawks Health, unveiled the recycled bottle cap mural and we were excited to see Earth Day represented in this colorful, happy design. Congratulations to Elle Siemens and Emerson Putman whose artwork inspired this creation, with the final design and construction completed by Dahlia Shalal. It will be installed for all of Chaparral to see on the covered wall by the lunch tables. Thank you to Nancy Bellinghiere Hall for heading up this program and bringing art and Earth Day together. Remember to recycle!
Volunteer Anna Araujo set up a seed-planting station in front of the garden for Earth Day. Kids came by during recess and as part of organized visits by their teachers, and planted a variety of flower seeds in recycled containers. We want these flowers to eventually be planted in our pollinator garden on the back hill, but are waiting for irrigation to be installed. In the meantime, we will hand-water our babies. The numbers of pollinators are dwindling, like monarch butterflies and bees, so we are trying our best to help their populations. Anna did a great job educating kids on this conservation effort and explaining why pollination is vital to plants. We’re excited to see zinnias, daisies, and many other flowers start popping up.
Mrs. Harms’ 5th graders came out with volunteer Kristen Beatty and finished planting up the Three Sisters bed. We had sweet white corn seedlings from the Painted Rock garden booth at the flower show a couple weeks ago, so used most of those to plant throughout the bed about a foot apart. Then they chose varieties of pole beans that they liked – some Italian green, and some Roman silver – and planted those near the corn as well. Mrs. Beatty did a nutrition lesson on corn and the kids were able to learn the good side of maize, its history, how it grows, and were even able to taste some sweet corn kernels and popcorn! They saw what popcorn looks like dried on a cob, and could see that some can even have a variety of colors. It was a great educational day in the garden.
Ms. O’Bierne’s kindergartners came out for a tour through the garden in honor of Earth Day while they were learning about biodegradable items. We walked through the compost stations and looked at the worm bins, busy doing their vermicomposting. These kids are excited to get back in to hold the worms and learn more about them close-up.
Earth Day was a great, full day for us. Thank you to Mrs. Keesling for donating two shade sails to our garden! We can't wait to find the perfect spot to put them up and shade our outdoor classroom. Many, many thanks!
Week of 4/11 - 4/15/16
SPRING BREAK! We got lots of exciting rain the first part of the week and the garden did fine. There were a few spots where rivers of dirt collected, like on the green turf carpet which I'll have to beat! But it's nice to be able to turn off the sprinklers for a while.
Tuesday Bruce "Opa" McCoy met me at the school and we planted several flowering bushes on our hillside behind the garden, including lantana, canary island sage, greenbark lilac, yellow daisies, and Indian hawthorn. It was nice that the hill was damp and soft to dig in, and Bruce engineered some natural looking plant wells to make sure they retain as much water as possible and don't slide away in the next rain.
The hill behind is the "before". We'll take an "after" some day and see if it has filled in!
Thank you to Nancy Bellinghiere Hall for taking over garden chores the last half of the week so that we could go to.... Disneyland! And Saturday was exciting because Mrs. Buhr nominated me for the Hats Off To Volunteers Award for Chaparral. It was a nice ceremony with all of the local RB celebs and politicians there to present. Thank you for this honor! My kids were quite proud to see their mom on stage. :)
Hope everyone had a nice Spring Break and we'll see you in the garden! ~Joelle jrkohn@gmail.com
Week of 4/4 - 4/8/16
What a gorgeous weekend it was for some gardening. I hung out in my own home garden cleaning out a bed and replanting it with tomatoes, and now I'm excited to get Chaparral's in! On 4/2/16 I stopped over at Farmer Roy's greenhouse for a "Milkweed Planting Party" with Poway Valley Garden Club. It was a BYOS (bring your own seed) party, with peat pots and soil generously donated. So I planted up a ton of tropical milkweed and another type, Asclepias physocarpa (nicknamed "Hairy Balls" - no joke!), to join our native milkweed in our future monarch garden. Milkweed is what monarchs lay their eggs on, and it becomes the caterpillars' food source when they hatch. The seed trays are currently living on my warm kitchen counter, and as I write this on 4/12/16, the tropical seeds have sprouted and are about 1/2" tall!
CA Native poppies at home
CA Native milkweed from February seeding
Reinhold Mueller from Innovations Academy, Roy, Joelle
Monarchs love Lantana
Tropical milkweed planted 4/2, pic taken 4/12
Monday Mrs. Harms' 5th graders came out to get the Three Sisters bed started. They had to figure out seed spacing based on bed size and time to plant based on harvest calendars. They also learned the story about the Three Sisters, a farming technique and belief used by Iroquois Indian tribes. The story is that the corn sister supports the bean sister by giving her a place to grow upwards. The bean sister supports the corn sister by holding her tighter upright and protecting her from wind, and by putting nitrogen back into the soil for all of the sisters. And the squash sister supports the other sisters by keeping the soil shaded from evaporation and protecting from bugs and critters. It was a fun morning of learning and planting seeds, and my hope is that these 5th graders didn't even realize they were doing math!
Planting squash seeds 1-ft apart
At recess on Monday, the "regulars" came out to help in the garden. They harvested a few more romaine lettuce seeds and watered our gladiolas coming up in the front. Thank you, helper hawks!
Tuesday we were gifted by Kellogg Garden Products with two palettes full of bags of soil, compost, fertilizer, and amendments in preparation for the pollinator garden, native garden, and two new raised beds we plan to build. Thank you Kellogg for this huge donation! Unfortunately it was delivered on a semi truck that couldn't make the turn into the Chaparral driveway, so the load is currently living in my personal driveway. So if you see me hauling bags of stinky stuff each morning, you'll know why!
Wednesday was a big day for the garden. It started with our garden meeting, during which we figured out many plans going forward. We're excited for irrigation lines to be extended to the new garden areas, so now it's a matter of when. There are also plans for the garden during Earth Day and Art at Dark. Stay tuned!
After the meeting, Ms. Glady's first graders came out to read about "Brilliant Bees" and pollination, to do springtime observations, and to plant their sunflower seedlings along the fenceline. There has been a "potting soil" spot saved for them to compare with Sabin's seeds planted in various amendments. It's not a perfect experiment though, because these seedlings are bigger than the other seedlings already, and we figured out some bugs or finches might have eaten Sabin's seedlings closest to the birdfeeders! So I'll invite that class back out to replant, and this time, we'll protect the plants and see how they do. But we had a great time with Ms. Glady's class, along with volunteer extraordinaires Shana Eastman, Suzie Morga, and Tracee Fitzgerald. We can't wait to get back out again.
As Ms. Glady's class was marching out, Mrs. Mahelona's 2nd grade class was marching in. Chad Neale and I ran stations to teach all about roots. These kids learned about root nutrition and had tastings of radishes, carrots and jicama. And they planted seeds of yellow carrots, orange carrots and radishes. We used pelleted seeds for the yellowbunch carrots, and regular uncoated seeds for the orange nantes carrots. We'll see how they come up! They had a fun time reading "Tops and Bottoms" too, so now have a good understanding of roots. Ask them what a tap root is!
This is a harmless, native Huntsman Spider, or Giant Crab Spider, a nocturnal hunter that doesn't spin webs for snaring prey.
Mr. Kolp's 4th graders came out just after and did a root lesson too. They previewed some slides on roots in class and were able to taste the same root veggies. Their more sophisticated palettes and understanding of the immune system with benefiting vitamins made it a great nutrition lesson. Jicama seemed to be the fan favorite! Then at Bruce McCoy's station, they planted up a row in the 4th grade bed with a variety of tomato plants. We will see which ones take off between the hybrids, the heirlooms, or the cherry tomatoes!
And next in line, came Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd graders to learn about roots. They tasted the carrots, jicama and radishes with fervor (hungrier timepoint being noon perhaps?!), planted radish seeds in trays to take back to their class and watch grow in their window, and also read about "Tops and Bottoms". It was a fun lesson. See if they know why plants have roots, which are for storage, and which are good for anchoring the plant.
Thursday I took a field trip to Moosa Creek Nursery, deep into Escondido. It was a rainy day, but it didn't stop these garden enthusiasts from hosting an open house to teach about native plants. They let guests tour the facility and take a native plant home. I chose a Greenbark lilac for our pollinator garden and am anxious to get it into the ground in its new home.
Picked up this free plant after the native lecture
Friday was our half-day before the break, and I spent most of it preparing for the PVGC's 38th Annual Standard Flower Show held at Old Poway Park Saturday April 9th. I submitted 3 sample plants for judging and Chaparral ended up winning 2nd place for Vine Vegetables (Mrs. Sevilla's 1st grade Sugar Snap Peas), 2nd place for CA Native Plant (California Buckwheat from our native hillside garden), and an Honorable Mention for CA Native Shrub (Laurel sumac from our native hillside garden). So now we can officially say our garden is award-winning!
The Flower Show also had a parallel Flower Sale going on. Chaparral had a booth and sold sunflower seedlings, watercolored greeting cards, and packets of seeds all made by students. We had some amazing student volunteers help at shifts at our booth, including Toby Kohn, Elliot Kohn, Lindsay Carmichael, Nahal Moein, Ellie Araujo, and Kate Garver. It was a great day with lots of education, exposure, camaraderie, and even some sales! Thank you to everyone who helped during this event. And look for Nahal and Lindsay's photo in the Union Tribune, RB Journal or Poway Chieftan. They gave a nice interview and took a cute picture for the press.
I'm writing this during Spring Break and hope you all are having a nice vacation from the school hustle! I love staying in my pj's a little longer than usual, I have to admit! But that's not going to stop me from putting on my muck boots and digging around in the dirt a little! Enjoy the time off and see you Monday.
Week of 3/28 - 4/1/16
It was a wonderful Easter weekend and the weather was amazing! Our garden held up well, although I lost some teeny lettuce seedlings because I didn't come in to water. So we'll work to reseed them with our recess kids this week. Speaking of recess kids, I had many helpers this week doing so many garden chores for me that I barely had to do anything. It was nice to have so many willing hands on deck.
Decorating Black-Eyed Susan packets
Getting the 3rd grade bed ready for spring
Sifting finished compost, our 1st batch!
On Tuesday, Bruce McCoy took out Mrs. Dwyer's kindergartners and did an herb lesson with them. They learned to use their olfactory senses on herbs, and even did a fun taste test with veggies dipped in dressings containing all of the herbs they had just learned about. We're creating mini foodies here!
Wednesday the 4-year-old preschool class came out for the first time! Mrs. Chlebowski and moms Julienne Albierco and Jenna Demarest helped make their garden time fun. We did a garden tour, read the The Hungry Caterpillar, tasted all that the hungry caterpillar tasted, learned a bit about life cycle, and then planted sunflowers that they could take back to class to watch grow. It was a fun morning with these little mini Hawks!
Later on 3/30, Mr. N's 4th graders came out to the garden for the first time. (It was a day of firsts!) We learned about flower anatomy, harvested, collected and decorated Black-Eyed Susan seed packets with volunteer Chad Neale, and tasted flowers broccoli and cauliflower while learning about their nutrition. It was a fun day!
Thursday, the last day of March, Mr. Carson's class came out with volunteer Shauna Young and her crew, and they taught these smart 3rd graders about flowers' anatomy, nutrition, and even planting. They learned about edibles broccoli and cauliflower, and planted more edibles - nasturtium - in the 3rd grade box. I really hope these bloom to create the pretty yet spicy flowers that we often see on fancy salads. And they are beneficial to gardens and keep away bad bugs! As a grand finale, Carson's class threw handfuls of wildflower seeds up on our hill to hopefully get a few to bloom, becoming the beginning of our pollinator garden. Time (and water) will tell!
Friday April 1st, Ms. Lewis had her math kids come out to measure our future native trail for us. We need to submit numbers to the school district to get this trail construction underway, and the 5th graders were happy to oblige. They came out with measuring tapes and meter sticks, broke into teams, and came up with a consensus of measurements. They were happy, nature mathematicians!
Kids Want to "Hawk" Some Flowers? Chaparral will have a booth at the Flower Show at Old Poway Park on Saturday April 9th. We're hoping garden kids will sign up for shifts to help us sell flowers, seeds, and cards. Please consider one hour of your time on a Saturday. Drop your kiddo and shop at the Poway Farmer's Market too! Thank you! VolunteerSpot shifts on http://vols.pt/4LYbA2
Week of 3/21 - 3/25/16
Over the weekend, I happened to go shopping at the Poway Home Depot for items for my house. But of course, I picked up a few things for the school garden too. I thought I would see if they had any scrap lumber or extra plastic pots to give away, so asked an employee. They called the manager over, who just happened to be Chaparral parent extraordinaire Ryan Domingue! He not only gave us a nice discount, but rolled over a shopping cart full of throwaway vegetables! These "recycled" veggies will be part of our fundraiser on Friday and will of course also go into our own garden beds. We are so thankful to Ryan and to Home Depot for supporting the Hawks Health Garden and saving us ton$!
My garage, the greenhouse!
Also busy this weekend was The Dad's Club. They did a great favor for the garden by moving a big portion of mulch to the back of the garden. So our heartfelt thanks to Dan Luken, Mike Pattison, Chris Garrity and Jeff Shanley.
I love March! This time of year makes me giddy inside, seeing all of the flowers in bloom in RB and Poway. So I was excited to work with Shauna Young, Jen Day, and Erin Duran and do a sunflower lesson with Ms. Sabin's class. They painted some beautiful cards, putting the "A" in "STEAM". They also planted sunflower seeds along the fence, experimenting with soil amendments in three different sections. And as a last station, these first graders learned about nutrition and sunflowers, tasting seeds and sunbutter on celery. Jen even explained what "ants on a log" are - celery, sun/peanut butter, and raisins! What a great, gardeny idea!
Thank you to Erin Duran for the donation of wonderful new work gloves, kid and adult size. We will put them to good work!
Wednesday a bunch of helpers came out during recess and helped with many garden chores. It was great to have so many eager kids enjoying the sunshine and the company. They planted our blueberry bush and helped get the compost browns and greens ratio back on track. These kiddos are not afraid of work! I love it!
Tuesday I went to Olivewood Gardens to get some ideas from their teaching garden. It is in National City, and though it is a drive, I totally recommend going and checking it out. Your kids will love it too. Tuesdays they do a free public tour from 10-11am and when I went, I was the only one there, so got lots of attention and could ask tons of questions. It was inspiring! There are other fun garden structures not pictured below, but I'm hiding those photos because I want to borrow their ideas and surprise you!
Teaching tables
A passionflower tunnel kids crawl through
Coastal gardens can grow so well!
Free range chickens!
Walton house contains teaching kitchen
Teaching kids about veggies
I am itching to get our pollinator garden going! But first things first - we have to plan it out and learn what might work and what won't. Luckily on Wednesday, our amazing Master Gardener Heather Holland, trained a few of us in all things monarch butterfly. We learned about the plants the adults need for nectar, as well as things like warm rocks, mud and water. We also learned about milkweed, the plant of choice for the monarchs to lay their eggs on so that hatching caterpillars may feed on the leaves. She gave us lots of good lesson ideas, which I will scan and post soon. So with this knowledge, and with plans to plant the hill, we will get our pollinator garden going soon!
Friday was a "Crazy Day", both in theme and in schedule! First we started off with a Community Gathering, during which we honored Kate Garver with our first-ever "Busy Bee" Award. This is a new award given to a stand-out student volunteer who helps in the garden during recess. Kate, from Mrs. Smyth & Hansen's first grade class, is always there to help in the garden, sometimes by herself, and other times with her friends. She eagerly pops into the garden just about every day, and will do anything that is asked of her and is always happy and ready to get her hands dirty. So thank you Kate, our March Busy Bee! We also honored Adam Dalati, whose dad, Ed Dalati, is a tireless volunteer in the garden, helping to build our fence, path, gate, table...any sort of project that he can take on. For his service, we had a brick engraved in commemoration. Thank you Ed Dalati for your big heart and your energy you put into the garden!
Next on Friday, we had our harvest to get ready for Spring planting. Mr. Rinehart's and Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's third grade classes came out to help pull plants and prep them for the Farmer's Market. We had jobs of puller, shaker, washer, and bagger. These kids took turns yanking out plants that were ready to go, like our humongous bok choy and our pretty heads of broccoli. The cauliflower came out, as well as some lettuce and kale, and we topped it off with bunches of cilantro too. The kids had a great time cleaning, washing, and sorting the produce and deciding what should go to market. It was a great lesson in plant life cycles, seeing as these kids were the ones that planted the seeds and seedlings in the first place, and also in commerce, as they prepped the food and helped set up our farmer's market table. It was an exciting morning in the garden!
Nancy Bellinghiere Hall's family came to visit!
After the harvest, the produce made its way over to the Farmer's Market table at the Paper Picnic. There, we were able to share our goods, including the donated plants from Home Depot and seed packets from the kids, with parents, grandparents, kids and teachers. We took donations and enjoyed the day with our own kids too. Thanks to Nancy Bellinghiere Hall, Anna Araujo, Subbu Ganapathy, and Ed Dalati for being there shift by shift. And thank you to all of the Chaparral supporters for donating over $300 in total! What a success!
One last event on Friday: the first graders in Smyth/Hansen's class came out and did a root lesson lead by volunteers Jodie Moore, Virginia Garver, and Michelle Knight. They did some great watercolor artwork on cards, some of the best we've had yet! Then they came into the garden and during harvesting and tilling of the soil, they learned all about radishes and all roots. They even found some earthworms and relocated them to our compost bin! Then they had a great time doing some root tastings of carrots, onions, radishes, and beets. They filled out a chart using descriptors and were quite the foodie botanists figuring out what they liked, didn't like, and why! What a fun lesson.
What a fun way to spend the day...which was actually my birthday too! It was very memorable. Thanks for all of the happy wishes! ~Joelle
Week of 3/14 - 3/18/16
Another gorgeous week in the garden! Monday was a bit foggy, misty, and shpritzy, so I stayed in and caught up on lots of garden paperwork. I did peek at the seedlings and they are coming right along. Our milkweed in Farmer Roy's greenhouse, along with our own trays at school, are happy as can be.
CA Native Milkweed planted 2/11/16
Sweet peas, planted 2/29/16
Sunflowers, planted 3/9/16
Romaine lettuce, planted 3/2/16
Tuesday I brought out Mrs. McDonnell's class and with the help of Subbu Ganapathy, they harvested their Easter Egg radishes. Some kids got the jobs of pullers, and some kids got the jobs of washers. Then we put them in size order. They voted on one radish to take back to class and taste, and the rest were donated to our Farmer's Market stash. These kindergartners were so enthusiastic and such good listeners!
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall came out with groups of her kids to have them brainstorm ideas and measure the future native trail behind our garden. These 3rd graders did a great job pre-planning some of the engineering of the path.
Bruce and Barbara McCoy brought out Mrs. Dwyer's Kindergartners Tuesday and they did a lesson on roots. Not only did they learn the difference between taproots and fibrous roots, but they were able to find roots in the garden, and taste some edible roots as well.
Wednesday was a big morning for us. We had a Farmer's Market with the bok choy, kale, radishes, lettuce, herbs, and cabbages that we've been harvesting. We also had some backyard donations of lemons, grapefruit and oranges. It was a quick, fun morning of shopping for many of the kids, parents at drop-off, and teachers before class started. We even had peach trees up for trade, sold to us at deep discounts by the San Diego Community Garden Network! This fundraiser was a success, making the garden nearly $200 in the one hour that it was open! We also had donations of gift cards and garden equipment. Thank you to all of the Chaparral supporters! We plan to do another table at the Paper Picnic on March 25th. Hope to see you there.
Thursday, St. Patrick's Day, we saw a beautiful monarch make its way through our garden. Some kids tried to follow it as far as they could. What a cute scene! We hope this butterfly tells its friends so we can start our pollinator garden. I was also lucky enough to catch two very tall, helpful leprechauns in the garden! See if you can find them:
Matthew Morga, a recess helper
Volunteer Ed Dalati, keeping the rabbits out!
The third graders in Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class came out to see how their seeds have grown too. It was fun to help them find their name and then to see what had sprouted. Most kids planted sweet peas, but some planted lima beans much to my surprise!
Hope everyone had a great last week of Winter! Here comes Spring, officially now!
Week of 3/7 - 3/11/16
We're enjoying our new learning centers. Here is one of the setups before the classes came through. Monday the garden saw lots of rain. I took a couple of photos just to remember how the water runoff patterns look. We may need to put in some gravelly natural drainage paths to keep too much soil erosion from occurring.
Tuesday the weather cleared up and Mr. Rinehart's class came out with Shawna Kirpalani and Helena Czanik to do a flower lesson and harvest their romaine lettuce. They learned what it means for a plant to bolt and send up flowers. They also taste-tested the flower buds broccoli and cauliflower, and young romaine versus old romaine. They learned about the bitterness when lettuce starts producing the milky substance, which is something I just recently learned too!
Mrs. Dwyer's kindergartners came out Tuesday afternoon to learn about seeds. Bruce McCoy helped them plant tiny seeds of lettuce, actually called microgreens, in the K box down the middle row. Mrs. Dwyer went over the anatomy of a seed and showed what a cross-section of a bean looks like. And at the last station, they were able to learn about and taste different types of peas: snow, snap and garden. Frozen green peas were a hit and many kids wanted seconds. Success!
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Wednesday superstar volunteer Ed Dalati finished burying the rabbit fence along the back of the garden. What a chore! Thank you Ed!
Next, Ms. Glady came out with her class along with Shana Eastman to learn about sunflowers. They did some watercoloring of their vision of a sunflower, learned plant parts, did observations of flowers in the garden, planted sunflower seeds in trays, and also did some tasting of sunflower seeds and sunbutter on bok choy. We had some first graders learning lots about flowers and finding new, healthy favorite snacks!
Next Mrs. Grant came out with her sweet first graders and Laureen Franklin and did a similar lesson on sunflowers, this time doing some flower poetry at the front tables. It was cute to see these students get inspired by sunflowers and come up with great descriptions. These kids were super enthusiastic about snack time of sunflower products, and did a great job listening and learning. They even spotted a garden friend, a cool light-green spider!
Mrs. McDonnell's class stopped in Wednesday to see how their radishes were growing. These kindergartners were so excited to find out that their little brown seed had turned into a bona fide radish. They had fun guessing what color their "easter egg" radish would be, by just seeing a peek of their shoulders over the top of the dirt. So cute!
Thursday the 10th, Ms. McAtee brought her eager 5th graders out to the garden to harvest their watermelon radishes and take their final measurements. Their radishes had sent up flowers, so it was neat to see the entire life cycle. They also learned all about flowers' anatomy and why pollination is important. And last but not least, Shauna Smith did a nutrition lesson and they were able to taste some edible flower buds - broccoli florets - and flower stems - broccoli stalks! The consensus was that the stalks were sweeter. Look at that! We parents should cook all of the broccoli, not just the tops!
It was a radish-harvesting day, because Mrs. N's kindergartners came out right afterwards to pull theirs. Shawna Kirpalani and Lisa Partain were stars at their stations, and altogether, the kids harvested, washed, counted and put into order their radishes. They used many descriptive words to talk about their radishes, and we were surprised to see all of the colors and shapes come out of the ground! They did a worksheet on plant parts, and then did nutrition and tastings of different parts of the plants - leaves (cabbage), roots (radish), flower (broccoli) and stem (cauliflower stalks). What a fun morning in the garden!
Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Helson's class came out with Laureen Franklin, Tammy Oltman and Vanessa Holden to learn all about flowers - flower anatomy, pollination, and observations in the garden. I was so impressed with their flower drawings and understanding of the life cycle! They also had a vermicomposting station where they learned all about our composting worm friends. It was a great day for these 4th graders...and for us!
And Friday marked our last lesson of the week. Mrs. Engebretsen's 3rd grade class came out for a lesson on leaves with the substitute teacher Mrs. Miller, and volunteers Joyce Carter, and Bruce and Barbara McCoy. The kids learned all about leaves, did scientific observations, filled out an anatomy and measurement worksheet, and harvested their cabbages. They ate a great helping each of their crop and pretty much unanimously agreed that they liked this nutritious snack, just in time for St. Patrick's Day! What a fun week! Thanks everyone and enjoy the weekend. :)
Week of 2/29 - 3/6/16
Garden Corps volunteer extraordinaire Shauna Young stepped up to be Ms. Sabin's garden parent. I'm so excited! She organized a time to come out to the garden along with Jen Day and Tiffany Whann, so Monday we did our first lesson. These 1st graders were able to learn all about green peas - sugar snap, snow peas, and garden peas. They did a fun fact card craft, were able to plant a row of sugar snap peas, did some observing in the garden, and then learned about different fruits' and veggies' seeds while tasting all the different varieties. "Red bell pepper is sweet, just like candy!" was one of my favorite quotes! Ask your kiddo all about it!
Monday afternoon, volunteer Allison Harris brought out Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd graders to do a seed lesson. She soaked lima beans overnight, so they were ready for dissection. The kids learned about seed anatomy and vocabulary words like cotyledon and embryo. They planted sweet pea seeds and were able to see the protective coat of a dried seed firsthand. Then they learned about the nutrition of peas, one of our favorite edible seeds. They tasted plain peas, and peas in pods, like snap peas and snow peas. Did you know a serving of peas has more Vitamin C than two large apples? I've never seen so many kids ask for seconds and thirds of their veggies!
Tuesday and Wednesday were Spring Cleaning days for the shed. I pulled everything out, repainted a metal shelf donated by Ed Dalati (thank you!), and with the major help of Chris Bradbury bringing it into the garden and attaching a wooden backing on the shed with metal screws, put it in its new home along the back wall of the shed. Bruce McCoy helped put together another metal shelf from Ed, and this will hold all of our other outdoor supplies. Chris Bradbury also spent a ton of time digging down along the fenceline to prepare the last section of our back fence for an underground critter barrier. And all of the classes are enjoying the potting bench that Ed Dalati built for us out of recycled wood. It's been instrumental in our lessons. It takes a village, so thank you to these amazing, hardworking dads!!! Also, thank you to donors Subbu Raja and Rosemary Anderson for your generous donations of a clear plastic table cover, tomato cages, a bug house, shovels, frog decorations and a watering birdfeeder. You are all really helping our garden!
The junk pile is now out of the way of the kids
Wednesday some other people stopped by the garden too. We had recess helpers come and plant some romaine lettuce seeds and water our new seed trays. Mr. Voorhees' class also stopped by to observe their peas planted a month ago. They were able to write down their data, do some observing of our vermicomposting bins, and help plant some romaine seeds. Lots of activity made Wacky Wednesday fly by!
Thursday Mrs. Higgins' class came out with Bruce McCoy (aka "Opa") and did a worm lesson. At the front tables, they did some measuring of their gummy worms. They learned about halves and fourths, as they cut their snack worms up to measure. Then they moved into the garden and learned all about worm parts. It's impressive to hear 2nd graders describe what a pharynx does! Then these smarties moved to the worm bin and got to see vermicomposting in action. It was wiggly fun learning, with some kale nibbling in their spare time. Love these kids!
Thursday Mr. Carson's 3rd grade class also came out with moms Shauna Young and Leslie Chung. They did an awesome job teaching about leaves' anatomy, function, doing measurements, and observations of different leaves in the garden. Ask those kids the difference between a monocot leaf and a dicot leaf! These botanists were also able to harvest and taste leaves from our garden - kale and romaine lettuce. They learned their nutrition, and compared kale chips from the store to raw kale. Next time you're in the kitchen with them, ask them to make you some fresh and healthy lettuce wraps. They know how!
Friday Mrs. Hibbert came out to the garden with wonderful moms Melissa Lazaro and Anna Araujo. These 3rd graders had a lesson in flowers too, and were able to do an anatomy worksheet and observations on various flowers from my backyard on display, and the flowers blooming in the Hawks garden. It was neat to look at the ovary of a hibuscus flower through a magnifying lens. These budding students also helped to harvest, package, and plant Black-Eyed Susan seeds. Look for their artwork on seed packets at the next Farmer's Market! Broccoli and cauliflower was also harvested and tasted, and the kids learned that these are edible flower buds full of nutrition.
Thank you to all of the wonderful volunteers and teachers who came out this week. It was jam-packed and fun. Spring is in the air! Looking forward to more garden activities next week. :) ~Joelle
Week of 2/22 - 2/26/16
We're baaaack! Mr. Kolp's class came out Tuesday to learn all about flowers. We dissected a hibiscus flower from my house and were able to study the anatomy via cross-section. These 4th graders went through rotations learning about plant parts and function, observations of vegetables flowering in the garden, harvesting and planting zinnia seeds from dried flower heads, and even tasting and learning the nutrition of broccoli and cauliflower, both budding edible flowers. It was fun and educational!
A female, self-sowed pumpkin flower
Pollinator in action!
Mrs. BellinghiereHall's class came out to see what was in the garden by way of flowers too. We had a fun time rotating through a scientific observation station and a planting/harvesting station. They helped plant zinnia seeds for our future entries into the Poway Valley Garden Club Flower Show and Plant Sale. And they were the lucky recipients of the first harvested head of cabbage. The majority of the class loved the sweet leaves and asked for seconds!
Wednesday we had some recess visitors who helped plant seeds and our artichoke plant, another edible flower. The artichoke will get its own pot because it will get so big and we don't necessarily want it shading any other veggies in the raised bed.
Bruce McCoy jumped in to volunteer, as he always does, building our new tumbling composter. It is fun to spin and get all of our garden scraps mixed and turning into good soil. Unfortunately, a piece came out and we had to take it apart and put it back together again to wedge the piece back in. My husband, David, and Chris Bradbury happened to be in the garden, so they took on that task. Thanks guys!
Thursday, Bruce and Mrs. Higgins came out to the garden and did a fun lesson with their broccoli patch. They have seen the entire life cycle of these vegetables and come out weekly with Mr. McCoy. What lucky little gardeners! They are about to finally pull the spent broccoli out and turn the box over for some spring planting.
Friday Chaparral held a Community Gathering. It happened to be "Dress As Your Favorite Book Character" Day, so Nancy Bellinghiere Hall was Fancy Nancy the Environmentalist! She had her own set of pollinators hanging from her hat. She announced our Earth-Friendly certification and also an Earth Day mural project for which Dahlia is collecting plastic bottle caps. Kids can submit their designs and the winning drawing will be what she makes the mural design around. I'm excited to see how it all turns out!
Week of 2/15 - 2/19/16
Happy Presidents' Week off! It was a nice time to catch up and do some shopping for the garden. We installed some poles with hooks on the garden hill to hang birdfeeders. We're trying to attract birds to our new pollinator garden area and to create a nice habitat for some local finches and such. It's fun hearing the sounds and seeing them flitting around enjoying their new birdseed!
It doesn't look like much now, but that hummingbird feeder and the birdfeeder platform on the right will attract many flying friends!
We brushed Wrigley, our family golden retriever, a lot and put his tufts of hair into the native buckwheat bushes on the hill. The birds fought over the fur to make their nests!
My mom, garden volunteer Joyce Carter, built some nice garden bed markers for us! The labels can be interchanged with a simple screwdriver, so we're excited to have some semi-permanent signs! Thank you Joyce!
I went to a great lecture given by our garden guru Farmer Roy, and got inspired by all of the Spring planting that he spoke about. Spring has sprung early, and we need to get our seeds going for all of our fun spring and summer crops! While I was on his Sunshine Care campus, I checked out how our native Milkweed seeds were doing in the greenhosue for our future Monarch butterfly garden. They are looking good!
I missed all of the kid noises as I puttered around taking care of the garden this week, but then I saw this cute reminder. Happy, swinging feet were once sitting here on this bench. This made me smile. And then I got out the broom. :)
Hope everyone enjoyed a nice week off!
Week of 2/8 - 2/12/16
We came onto campus Monday morning with a wonderful surprise: parent volunteer Ed Dalati finished another portion of our fence in the back of the garden. This will keep bunnies and rodents out above ground, and keep out any underground critters too, because he buried the hardware cloth down along the fenceline. He cleaned up some trash piles and prettied up the back area for us. Thank you Ed!!
The kindergartners in Ms. McDonnell's class came out Monday morning and planted up a row of radish seeds in the K box. They were so cute and excited to plant. They wandered through the garden making observations, and then rotated through worm stations. They did some math and writing worksheets, and then explored trays of dirt while tracing letters. And then they saw the real thing at the vermicomposting station and learned all about how our red wigglers help us recycle our leftover food while making plant food. Some friends came out at recess and filled out some leftover worksheets too. It was a fun morning in the garden.
Tuesday morning volunteers Subbu and Anna brought Ms. Chambers' class out into the garden to learn about leaves. They went through a station to learn about symmetry in nature. Leaves have equal sides, and romanesco cauliflower shows a natural fractal. These second graders rotated through a leaf tasting and learning station, as well as a worm station, where they were able to learn about our vermicomposting friends.
Ms. Helson sent some of her students out to plant their nasturtium flowers they had been growing in their classroom. They found nice spots for them in the 5th grade box, and had extra time to help plant in pots some nice rock purslane cuttings donated by Ella from Rolling Hills. They learned how certain plants grow not only from seeds, but by putting out new roots from their existing plant cells in vegetative propagation. And while they were learning this, they had some fun by naming all of the new plants. Meet Queen Elizabeth, Justin Bieber, Meghan Trainor and their friends!
Wednesday we got our garden certified by the Master Gardener Association of San Diego as an Earth-Friendly Garden. Check out our certificate! We're proud to be a part of these educational and conservational efforts.
Thursday Ed Dalati came back out and built a potting table for the garden! It is sorely needed for all of the kids needing spots to write on their worksheets in the back of the garden. Thank you Ed!! And Thursday afternoon, I took my kids to Farmer Roy's at Sunshine Care and he will help our milkweed seeds along in his greenhouse. These are California native milkweed plants to attract Monarch butterflies to lay their eggs here. Our new butterfly garden is in the works! Thank you Roy Wilburn, Sunshine Care, and EcoLife for the seeds.
Friday morning Mr. Staples' class came out to the garden with volunteer Kelly Ashman to learn about flowers. They rotated through a flower anatomy station where they completed their diagram and were able to taste nasturtium, cauliflower and broccoli. Then they did an observation station in the garden, jotting down botantist-like notes in their packets. And finally they came through the vermicomposting station and met our wonderful worms. If any kids come home wanting to make their own worm bin, please email me and let me know. I have easy plans to make one.
I hope everyone enjoys the President's Week off! I'll flit through the garden keeping things watered and might even get our bird area going, fingers crossed! Happy Friday. ~Joelle Kohn
Week of 2/1 - 2/5/16
After all of the rain we had on Sunday, I figured it was a good day to plant all of the California Poppy seedlings that I collected. So if you walked by the garden Monday morning, you probably saw me halfway up the hill, bent over at a funny angle, planting poppies! I put little rock rings around each baby plant so we can remember where they are. Even though they are natives and need to get used to the arid dirt, we will have to water them for a month or two while they get established. Subbu came by during the morning recess shift on Monday, and had kids doing all sorts of fun garden chores. You'll see a lot of plant markers hand-labeled by these Hawks, and know that the compost got a good turning by these busy hands!
Tuesday we had our garden planning meeting and talked about many ideas going forward. There are too many things to list here, but email me if you'd like to get involved with any of our exciting projects: building, putting together curriculum, and garden events during Earth Day, Arbor Day, and Art at Dark. And now that the weather is changing, spring planting is on everyone's mind too, so we're planning what should grow next. We were also in the news this past week with our donors from Poway Valley Garden Club!
Wednesday, volunteer Kinga Pocsveiler brought Mr. Voorhees' 5th grade class out to plant three different varieties of peas. They learned differences and similarities of peas, found out about their nutrition and life cycle, learned about soil amendments as they set up planting their peas in different volumes of compost, worm castings and chicken fertilizer, and did some measurements for spacing their plants using lengths and depths of the area. It will be exciting to see them grow! They rotated through my worm station and learned all about vermicomposting too. These kids were excited to come out and learn, and proved to be great little scientists!
A baby worm!
Friday Ms. Westmoreland's 2nd graders came out with volunteers Subbu and Anna and learned all about edible leaves. They did a neat craft with leaves and symmetry, they were able to taste-test different types of edible leaves, and then they rotated to the worm station and learned all about this mysterious creature. It's always fun learning about vermicomposting, and we even saw some worms "all tangled up". I quickly skimmed over the fact that they were mating because I will leave that lesson to the official 5th grade health teachers! Ah, nature!
During recess a bunch of Hawks came through and helped in the garden. We labeled garden items, shredded paper for the worms and compost, wet the paper, and helped prune some plants. The kids had a fun time noticing the life cycle of the broccoli, which we've let go to seed, and seeing how the yellow flowers bring in our pollinating bees. Everyone was having fun in the sun!
On Feb 5th, Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class also came out into the garden in the morning. Allison Harris taught the kids how to sketch trees in nature, and then brought them back into class to do a poster contest for upcoming Arbor Day. The other garden rotations were all about leaves. We did leaf rubbings and learned all the names of leaf parts. Then we observed leaves in the garden and filled out a worksheet to solidify our learnings. It was a fun, educational morning!
Week of 1/25 - 1/29/16
What a fun and busy week we had in the garden. I took a little time on Sunday to go to the Armstrong Nursery in Poway to pick up our donated bags from Kellogg Soil. We spent some family time unloading it and stacking it up for the Hawks' use!
Monday, Shawna Kirpalani, Lisa Partain and Shauna Eastman brought out Mrs. N's kindergartners for a lesson in radishes. They planted, measured, tasted, learned about their nutrition, and even painted some blank notecards of root vegetables for the garden. It was an exciting morning and these kids were great learners. Thanks to the Garden Corps team for putting this all together!
Next, during recess, I had one of my favorite helpers come in to plant cauliflower seedlings in the 4th grade bed. These baby plants had been in their tray for so long that tiny cauliflowers bunches were already starting to grow, even though they were so little. We'll see how they do now that they're in their bed!
I brought over some California Poppy seedlings from my backyard to try to transplant on the garden hill. I'm hoping to do this next week after the coming rains. And I decided to get the second worm bin ready because we have so many red wigglers that reproduced, I figured they could use a new home and help make some more good compost. Thanks to Farmer Roy for the bin donation. I also stacked the green bins (thanks to Mrs. Higgins' donation!) to show the kids how to make their own home vermicomposting bin. All it takes is two Rubbermaid opaque tubs, one lid, and something to cut holes with. Contact me if you want more specific directions!
Wednesday Bruce McCoy transplanted some donated herbs and strawberries into new pots for our corner potted garden. Some 3rd graders helped him out, and now we will have berries to learn about, and a sensory center. Come Spring, get your noses ready to "guess that herb". Many thanks to Ella German of Rolling Hills Elementary for the mint, cilantro and strawberries!
Look what sprouted up under the table where we harvested seeds last Spring!
Thursday, Ms Lewis' 5th graders came out to conclude their radish experiment. They measured the Easter Egg radishes, checked on their hypotheses of which amendment would make them grow the biggest, and then they harvested their row of root veggies. Leaves were also brought into the lesson and Subbu Ganapathy taught them about similarities, differences, structure and tastes of edible leaves. And finally, these 5th graders became worm experts. Not only did they learn all about worms, their structure, and how they help us in the garden, but they gently moved them from their old vermicompost bin to their new one. It was a fun-filled morning!
On the heels of those students, out came Mrs. Sevilla's 1st graders to learn all about peas. Ivy Bruhn and Subbu Ganapathy taught all about different types of peas: garden or English peas, snow peas and snap peas. The students made fact cards and glued split peas onto them, filled out worksheets all about vegetable seeds, guessed how many seeds were inside each fruit or veggie, sampled some of this produce, and were able to plant up a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas by Johnny's Seeds, donated by Farmer Roy. We had a great time with these enthusiastic kiddos.
Volunteer Kristin Beatty brought out Mrs. Harms' 5th grade class on Thursday too, and they were able to explore the garden with their observation charts. They became junior botanists by drawing, measuring and writing about plants. At the next station with Anna Arujo, they learned about edible leaves and were able to compare structures and tastes. Then they came through my station and learned all about worms. A couple kids found worm eggs, and even held the tiniest baby worm! They helped move several Red Wigglers into their new worm bin and a had a screaming good time doing so!
See the baby worm?
Enzo found a worm egg!
Friday Mrs. Hibbert's 3rd grade class learned all about leaves courtesy of Melissa Lazaro. She put together a great lesson where the kids observed and measured leaves, harvested kale and romaine lettuce, learned how to make lettuce wraps, and taste-tested kale chips. Anna Araujo helped at a station and offered nutrition information to these little smarties, and everyone had a fun morning!
Again keep in mind that all tastings are cross-referenced with our parent-submitted garden permission slips. If you have any concerns about your child tasting organically grown items from our garden or any store bought items, please let us know. Thank you! Hope you all have a great weekend and let's see how this rainstorm on Sunday makes our garden grow!
~Joelle Kohn jrkohn@gmail.com
Week of 1/18 - 1/22/16
This week was flower-focused as classes came through to observe the fun cauliflower growing in the 2nd grade bed. Mrs Chambers brought her class out to observe the different colors, shapes and sizes. See if you can find the cheddar, green, white, and our new favorite, Romanesco. The Romanesco's shape approximates a fractal with its buds growing around in a logarithmic spiral. This is the perfect example of math in nature!
Mrs. Baird's 2nd grade class came out to do garden observations, to learn about broccoli and cauliflower, to take measurements, to learn about roots, leaves, flowers, stems, seeds and fruits, and to meet our "Mystery Creature". They were exceptional students and had lots of fun out in the garden exploring. Many thanks to volunteers Nichele McCague and Joyce Cater (my mom!) for coming out and running stations.
There is a School Garden Network and one of the coordinators, Ella from Rolling Hills gave us a nice tour of their Literacy Garden. She has a wonderful website of updates here.
She also gave us a wonderful donation of a bunch of plants that they thinned out of their garden: cilantro, mint and strawberries. We're excited to now expand our herb pots and and make a new berry area. Here's a shot of the plants that I'm babysitting in my kitchen window. :)
We'll have a garden planning meeting on 2/2/16 in Room 44 to discuss plans going forward. Volunteers & teachers welcome to attend. Have a great week! ~Joelle
Week of 1/11 - 1/14/16
This week was surprisingly quiet in the garden. I think the kids are still enjoying the outdoors on the playground and the teachers are busy catching up. We also only have 4 days this week and next, so maybe that's factoring into it. I did a lot of background work this week, planning out how our garden will grow and thinking of fun new ways that we can do lessons with Garden Corps. If you are a garden volunteer, please check out our private site page https://chaparralshawkshealthgarden.shutterfly.com/lessons to keep track of which classes have come out and what they have done. There are also tons of pdfs available to download from which to teach. I have been buzzing away at my scanner!
The Poway Valley Garden Club also had their monthly meeting at Old Poway Park, so I went and gave them an update on what Chaparral has been doing. They are very supportive of our and other school gardens, so get excited to hear about them in action. A speaker from EcoLife also came and taught all about monarch butterflies, aquaponics and sustainable farming. It was very exciting and gave me lots of ideas for our plans going forward.
Thursday Mrs. Seawright's 5th grade class came out to finish up their radish experiment. Between chicken manure, mushroom compost, and worm castings, the kids concluded that worm castings mixed in the soil helped their watermelon radishes grow the largest. With parent Jan Haase, they took measurements of the leaves and the roots and then harvested them to observe them closer in their classroom. The radish charts are completed and hypotheses discussed - STEM in action! The kids also rotated through a leaf observation station, noticing the differences and similarities between kale, lettuce and bok choy. Nutrition was taught and small tastings* were given as part of their sensory observations. And parent Ivy Bruhn ran a fun food-categorizing game. The kids formed teams and worked together to get their answers, all while learning about groups of growing food. Despite the fire drill that interrupted our lesson, we had a fun day in the garden.
Some other neat observations in the garden:
Our first cheddar cauliflower
Self-sowed cilantro
Another self-sowed cilantro plant, appropriately in with the other "leaves we eat" bed
A solar experiment: broccoli on the sunny edge of the box growing better than broccoli in the cauliflower shade
The swiss chard is dwarfed by the broccoli on one side, and cauliflower on the other. More sun needed to grow!
Loving the pea blossoms
Cabbage leaves are starting to turn inward and form a head
A broccoli flowering. Mrs Higgins' 3rd grade harvested this just after the photo.
Come enjoy the new bench, donated by Farmer Roy of Sunshine Care.
*Note that all tastings are optional and are only given based on the parent permission slips sent out at the beginning of the year.
Week of 1/4 – 1/8/16
Happy New Year! It was our first week back after our break and whoa, Mother Nature! As you know, San Diego was the site of a huge 4-day rainstorm, complete with a tornado warning! We hunkered down, stayed inside, and did as much as we could indoors. Our garden did great and, unbelievably, nothing washed away!
In the meantime, I submitted many Smokey Bear posters and Tree Essays for our garden contests. They were sent to the California Garden Club, will be voted upon, and if well-rated, will be sent along to the National Garden Club. Fingers crossed that Chaparral wins! Thank you to all of the teachers, parents and Arts Attack volunteers for helping to get these completed and sent to me by the deadline. I was proud to package them up and send them along.
Friday we finally got our sunshine back and I enjoyed getting back into the garden. It was open during the morning, but no helpers came in. I think they were so excited to finally be back on the playground playing! Nonetheless, it was a wonderful morning to do some cleanup and maintenance. I can't wait to get some kids back out next week!
The 3rd grade box looks great: cabbage, kale, romaine lettuce and bok choy are happily growing!
Our kale loved the cold rain
Broccoli heads popping up everywhere
Several snow peas are starting to blossom
Our rain gauge has never been so full!
A couple cauliflower heads showed up!
Interesting that the white cauliflower is first to flower over the cheddar and green varieties
Ava Foisie and Mrs. Wilkin find the cauliflower in the 2nd grade bed
The 5th grade box is full of radishes ready to harvest. This one is a watermelon radish.
Red radishes
Easter Egg variety radishes
Lots of little volunteer plants popping up. Here is some cilantro by the tables!
A dropped pumpkin seed sprouted by a marigold plant at the Kindergarten bed!
Lovely lavender
Ava harvests bok choy
This will be washed and cut up as a topping for pizza
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall challenged her class to a reading contest over break, and the top readers who read at least half, or more, of the pages that she read, won a pizza party. It's payoff day! And bok choy makes pizza healthier!
Week of 12/14 – 12/18/15
Time to close up shop for a couple weeks for the holiday vacation! We brought Mrs. Sevilla's class out to finish planting up the snow peas in the first grade bed. They were great listeners and took good care of their baby plants going into the ground. They learned about vines and tendrils, and how certain plants like to grow on supports. They did a great job getting the rest of these into their new spots in the garden. The kids also did worksheets on plant parts and went on a scavenger hunt in the garden looking for these parts and drawing them out. It was an educational morning!
Right after this class, Mrs. Bellinghiere-Hall's class came out to do a Garden Corps lesson with Allison Harris and Abigail Meacham. It was a lesson on leaves and the kids had a fun time learning all about their structure and different plants' leaf similarities and differences. Mrs. Harris came up with a wonderful craft using white carnations and taught how they will soak up the colored water and turn green. These flowers were put into cute glass milk jars and decorated by the kids to become old-fashioned holiday gifts to take home to parents. At another station, kids observed leaves close-up with magnifying glasses and were able to do taste-tests between kale and bok choy, using ranch dressing, peanut butter and salt. They were great students and learned a lot.
I brought out groups from Mrs. Hansen/Smyth's and Ms.Glady's first grade classes to help plant the rest of the snow peas, being that it is the first grade bed. They were donated by Roy Wilburn from Sunshine Care and were growing in their tray for quite a while, thus the length. We're all excited to see how these long tangly baby plants take.
Week of 12/7 – 12/11/15
We started this week with a helpful group of first graders who worked on cleaning out the kindergarten bed. Mrs Smyth's and Hansen's class pulled out the remaining pumpkin vines, roots, and harvested the chives to hand out to all of the teachers as a Garden Corps gift. The kids rotated through stations and learned about tools and soils with volunteer Virginia Garver and Mrs. Smyth. They had a fun day getting their hands dirty!
Tuesday we had a garden meeting and caught our team up to speed with what we have going on. Check out our Brick Fundraiser. We're hoping that families that didn't get a brick last year can jump in and get their legacy brick this year.
Thursday we had an exciting addition built into our garden. A kestrel nesting box was installed by Danny Sedivec, a wildlife educator with The Raptor Institute. The bird box is on a tall pole between the garden and the kindergarten area, and will hopefully attract an American Kestrel, sometimes colloquially known as the sparrow hawk. This is asmall falcon who will keep an eye on our garden and eat grasshoppers, other insects, and any small mice that find their way into our beds! Once we pick a camera system, we would like to hook it up so that classrooms can watch our own mini Chappie build a home and learn how he spends his days. Thank you to Nancy Bellinghiere Hall for coordinating this build and helping in the conservation effort of the American Kestrel, whose numbers are declining in certain parts of its habitat range.
On the 11th, Ms. Glady's first grade class came out at 9am to plant some snow peas in the first grade box. We hurried through our tool stations and soil stations because the rain clouds were looming. We got 2/3 of the way through and sure enough, the rain started pouring down! I brought them out later so that everyone had a chance to plant.
That afternoon we tried again after the rain died down, and Melissa Lazaro and I brought Mrs. Hibbert's 3rd grade class out to harvest their bok choy. They had a fun time cutting and tasting these humongous leaves. They tried them plain and with ranch dressing, and I'm pretty sure the latter won the taste-test! The kids also learned all about tools and soils, and helped make a nice amended mixture for our K & 1 beds. They were the best!
Week of 11/30 – 12/4/15
Back to school after a nice Thanksgiving week off, we saw lots of good growth in the garden. Unfortunately we had a big sprinkler leak too in the 4th grade box, so it looked like a river had run right through our nice new dirt and baby broccoli plants! Volunteer Bruce McCoy fixed it for us and added more soil to get it back to a good, full level, but it needs to be planted up to get full of pretty green plants again. We're hoping to do so before the holiday break.
The chives were huge after Thanksgiving break
Some classes came out this week. Mrs. Sevilla's 1st graders came out with Garden Corps parents Ivy Bruhn and Kathleen Boyer. They helped clear their garden bed out, played a tool-matching game and chopped zinnia flowers off to shake deadheads for seed-harvest. They will learn lots about seeds this year, so we made sure to talk about how seeds get spread around, how to harvest them if they're not dry yet, life cycles of plants and flowers, and whether seeds can be food. These smarties learned lots and were great workers!
Ms. O'Bierne's kindergartners came out too and learned about pumpkins with Garden Corps parents Leah Caswell and Jeff Shanley. They pulled the final pumpkins, old vines, and leaves out of the K box to clear it out for the next planting. Because we just had Thanksgiving and ate pumpkin pies, they were excited to show what they knew about pumpkins: life cycle, observations of the outside of the pumpkin, and seeing the inside of the pumpkins. The students picked their favorite shapes and we carved three pumpkins into jack o'lanterns. Ms. O'Bierne took them back into her class so they could watch what happens when pumpkins get old, and then they could bring them back to the garden and add them to the compost. It was a fun day.
Mrs. Grant's/Cloutier's 1st grade class came into the garden to learn about plant parts. Each had a diagram of a plant that they labeled and colored, and then they had a checklist to fill out as a scavenger hunt to see if they could find each plant part in action in the garden. Then they all came and helped clear out the first grade box and were tickled to find actual roots, stems, leaves, and even giant earthworms in the soil. Garden Corps parent Laureen Franklin led them in learning all about tools and playing the matching game. So they came away from their day in our outdoor classroom quite a bit more knowledgeable. Mission accomplished!
We are looking forward to seeing the last of the garden contest submissions come in this week and next. Please contact Joelle with questions jrkohn@gmail.com . We also are going to have another engraved brick fundraiser. Flyers for that will come home next week. It will be great to add more names to our legacy garden path!
Week of 11/16 – 11/20/15
It was another short week with Monday off and the rest of the days half-days for parent-teacher conference week. But during the time we were at school, we planted up the rest of the 3rd grade bed. Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class came out with their leafy seedlings - mixed lettuce, butterhead lettuce, and parsley - and popped them out of their egg crates and into the ground with spoons, a quick fix for small tools! They also planted 4 nice dinosaur kale into the end of the box, so we'll see how all of these plantings take off.
My mom was in town visiting, so was a guest in the garden this morning
Quite a few recess helpers came through and were put to work pulling out debris from the 4th grade bed, like rocks, roots and old markers. They were busy as bees. Mrs. Helson's class came out to finish working on the 4th grade bed by clearing the rest of the roots out, turning the soil, adding amended soil, and leveling it out. Then they popped in their baby broccoli plants to watch how these edible flowers will grow.
Negotiating who gets to push the wheelbarrow
Ms. Glady's class came out with Shana Eastman and her Garden Corps crew, and they harvested the last of the green beans from the 1st grade box. It looks like they got a nice bowl full to share, and I'm sure these enthusiastic students learned much about these edible seeds.
The first grade and TK/Kindergarten beds will continue to get cleared out and replanted when we return from Thanksgiving break. We have a fun garden entry idea that we hope will come together and be a nice surprise for everyone in December!
We hope you have a great week off, and enjoy a bountiful feast full of healthy, nutritious food that you can share with family and friends. We're thankful to have such a wonderful group of teachers and students in our garden with us and look forward to all of our future harvests together. Happy Thanksgiving! ~Joelle
Making sure the worms have their feast for the Thanksgiving week too!
Week of 11/9 – 11/13/15
We kicked off the week getting to unwrap two new deliveries of brand new gloves, donated by Dea Davis, 5th grader Ivy's mom. They are clean, roomy, and either pink or blue. The kids are excited about them, and so am I! The garden was open this Monday during recesses so they were first to test them out. Let your kids know that if they want to get their friends together and all go help in the garden, or if they are on their own at recess and don't know what to do, they are welcome to come into the garden! Just do so as long as there is a volunteer inside and the gate is open. Look for our new flag out front!
Mr. Staples' 4th grade class came out Tuesday for a Garden Corps lesson. They learned all about composting from yours truly. And GC volunteer Kelly Ashman taught them the differences and similarities between foods we grow by playing a game grouping veggies and fruits into seed, leaf, root, flower, stem or fruit categories. And last but not least, the students were able to be the muscle behind clearing out last year's 4th grade tomato plants. They learned about plant life cycles and that these tomatoes were done producing fruit. These kids loved being able to rip out these monster plants without getting into trouble! And of course Mr. Staples made sure it was a lot of fun.
Veteran's Day Wednesday gave us a nice day off to reflect on sacrifices service men and women have made for our country. Hope everyone had a nice day with their family. I loved coming back on Thursday to help Ms. McAtee run her science project in the garden. Along with volunteer Monique Hultner, the kids set up experiments keeping track of temperatures. They graphed the differences between soil and water temperature in the shade versus the sun. Their graphs had multiple time points and they learned to always make starting observations before tracking changes. During the time in-between, they came into the garden to use our measuring tools to make observations - magnifying lenses, rain gauges, weather thermometers, our wind sock, tape measures, rulers, and hygrometers. The students were also able to go back to their radish chart from a few weeks ago and add growth measurements. They saw that the seeds planted in worm castings grew the most, chicken manure the second most, and mushroom compost was the least. They were able to add 9 more watermelon radish seeds to the empty areas, and measured out pre-plant fertilizer to help them along. A couple Easter egg radish seeds were also added to our new root-viewing box, created by Bruce McCoy. It has been neat to see lettuce and zinnia sprout in the box, and what their finger-like roots look like. Now we're adding a root veggie to see the difference.
We had a lot of fun in the garden, although some of these 5th graders had a little too much fun with our magnifying glasses and the sunshine that morning. Yes, they whispered to each other about how to burn things using the condensing of the sun's rays. As interesting of a physics experiment this is, it is also very dangerous. The teacher and I quickly caught on to what they were doing, and Ms. McAtee dealt her students as she saw fit. I reminded these kids of the wildfires that our area has recently seen, and that fires can easily start from kids fooling around just like this. Now we know we have a new rule to implement in our garden. So please chat with your kids about safe ways that they can use magnifying glasses, and reiterate that we have to show respect to our garden property and to living plants and creatures.
Mrs. Helson's 4th graders came out for a Garden Corps lesson, led by volunteers Laureen Franklin, Vanessa Holden, and Tammy Oltman. The kids learned about their grade's theme, flowers that we eat, and began learning parts of a flower and which other foods are edible flowers. Ask them about nasturtium flowers that are sometimes found in salad! The nutrition and plant life cycle of broccoli was taught, and the students were able to sample some raw broccoli. In the garden, they even discovered the first flowering broccoli plant that we have in the 2nd grade bed! They had a lesson on tools, what their names are, and how to safely use them. And then they rotated to a compost station, where they got the basics on how we recycle food scraps (greens) and cellulose items, like leaves and paper (browns), to make compost which feeds the plants. They were already quite smart on the subject, so it was fun to see their hands shoot up with the answers! And at the last station, the kids rotated through to help pull out the old basil plants. They were tall and woody and produced as many sweet leaves as they could before their season was done. The kids harvested the last nice leaves, and I made them fresh pesto to enjoy the next day. Mrs. Helson's students were also able to plant nasturtium seeds in peat pots to get to sprout in their classroom while the 4th grade bed is getting turned and ready for planting. We're excited to see these flowers bloom!
Our resident praying mantis was hanging around!
Learning about compost!
A group of helpful students came out at recess and wrote thank you letters to send along to the Village Garden Club of La Jolla. They had fun drawing pictures of our garden and showing their awe in the fact that these nice people would donate $600 to our garden. There were many gasps of glee going around the tables as they added their heartfelt thanks.
We found some more damage to our 3rd grade leaves - the romaine lettuce and the bok choy - so now have a new need for critter control. We think it is a rodent of some sort, or maybe a rabbit on a diet! We will cover up the bed with the white row covers to keep them out this week.
Have a fun weekend and hope to see you in the garden during our short half-days this week! ~Joelle Kohn
Week of 11/2 – 11/6/15
November started off with a bang...literally! There was a thunder and lightning storm Sunday night, so Monday morning kids were chatting about their rainy adventures. They even put out buckets to help collect rainwater for recycling.
With our garden savings, we purchased 12 large magnifying lenses for garden observations, a thermometer to keep track of weather changes, and a wind sock to learn about north, east, south and westward blowing winds. This rainbow-colored wind sock, complete with all 6 character colors, will also serve as a flag signifying "The Garden is Open". If your kids see this flag out in front of the garden during recess, it means they are welcome to come on in and help or just tour through and enjoy.
And BIG NEWS in our fundraising efforts: Subbu Ganapathy, Shelly Tickner, and the rest of the grant-writing team worked very hard and secured Chaparral's garden a $600 GRANT from the VILLAGE GARDEN CLUB OF LA JOLLA!!! Thank you!!! This generous grant from VGCLJ was raised from their member donations and given to a select few San Diego schools who fit their parameters and who completed a complicated application. This is an amazing addition to our garden and means that we can move our native garden, pollinator garden, and environmental conservation plans forward. Congratulations team, and many, many heartfelt thanks to these La Jolla gardeners. You can read more about their club on www.vgclj.com We will tour them through our garden soon and let them see how their donations will help our Hawks!
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's room parent volunteers set up a Mexican-American social studies lesson learning about Dia de los Muertos. Traditional marigolds - or cempasuchil - were planted in the garden by the 3rd graders. They learned about how to break up hard-packed soil, what San Diego's native soil looks like (sand and clay), why they need to amend soil, and how to transplant a potted, root-bound plant. They were hard workers! The marigolds now sit at the ends of four beds at ground-height, and we are hoping they do their beneficial duties in our garden, keeping away bad bugs. Time will tell!
After that, on Monday Mrs. Engebretson's class came out and planted cabbage seedlings into the 3rd grade bed. They learned all about cabbage, how it grows, that it is an edible leaf vegetable, and what it tastes like. The taste-test between red and green cabbage resulted in most kids liking...both! Their cheeks were full of this nutritious snack, as they wrote down their observations on their charts. Then these botanists rotated to the planting station where they put cabbage seedlings into the ground. And then they moved to the worm station, where they learned all about vermicomposting. We played worm trivia, and some of these kids taught me a few things about worms too! 3rd grade smarties!
After these lessons, the garden was open for kids to come and go during recesses throughout the week. I can honestly say, and I'll bet the other recess volunteers will too, that these students who want to offer up their free, recess time in the garden, are just the cutest! They are so willing and helpful, and will do just about anything to keep our garden moving along. This week helpers harvested zinnia seeds, hunted for bugs, and did some watering, even though we had more sprinkles on Monday. It was good that we had all of this moisture, because later in the week, our field sprinklers flooded because of a main water valve that needs repairing. So our water was shut off for half of the week. Good thing we have a watering can! Speaking of sprinklers, more recess helpers filled the 2nd grade box with soil to add nutrition for the plants and to raise up and support the pipes and sprinkler tapes running across the bed for better water distribution. These girls didn't mind getting dirty in order to help!
We found evidence of good bugs, like this praying mantis
And we found evidence of bad bugs, like whatever ate this citrus leaf. Snail?
Garden Corps extraordinaires, Nichele McCauge and Tish Bates, brought Ms. Baird's 2nd grade class out into the garden to learn about life cycles of plants and animals. They compared butterfly life cycles and corn life cycles, then went into the garden with our new magnifying lenses to observe signs of plant vs. animal life cycles, and then rotated to the math station in the back to estimate numbers of corn kernels and observe symmetry in nature. They even were able to take home a dried cob of this popping corn in a brown paper bag to make their own, healthy popcorn. Many were stunned to learn that popcorn doesn't come from a machine at the movie theater or a bag from the microwave! It was a day full of fun learning.
In other news, over Halloween weekend, the Partain family donated their time, energy, knowledge and tools to continue building the fence around the back of the garden. They, along with Ed Dalati and Steve Hall, put together an amazing gate made out of recycled wood posts. This gate will lead to the path through our future native garden, where we will learn about how people indigenous to our area used local plants in their day-to-day lives. We are so excited to have all of this extra flat space in the back and are already dreaming of ways to use it! Next, the underground wire fence will be installed at the perimeter to keep out groundhogs. And we'll soon move some groundcover from the piles at the front of the school to the back garden area. Thank you to everyone who has helped expand our garden!
You may also see some surveying stakes in the garden. Parent Scott Lowry has been planning and meeting with PUSD to build a shade structure in the back. It will be nice and long, covering the majority of the open space, but will have retractable shade cloth when we need that sun to shine on our plants and trees. This adjustable shade will be such a help when we use the back area as an outdoor classroom, keeping our kids cool and focused! So keep an eye out for this construction to begin, most likely in another month or so.
We also have garden contests ongoing and due soon. They are sponsored by the National Garden Club and if Chaparral's Hawks Health Garden wins in any category, it will get us national recognition that could lead to prize money, grants and sponsorship. It is a great way to teach kids about different areas of gardening, nature and ecology. Contests include:
a poetry contest entitled "Croaking, Leaping Frogs" to encourage students in protection. DUE 11/13
a sculpture contest using Reduced, Reused, & Recycled items. DUE 11/13
an essay contest about "Why Are Trees Important" DUE 12/1
a poster contest using Smokey Bear ("Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires") and/or Woodsy Owl ("Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute"). DUE 12/1
Teachers, Garden Corps, Art Corps and parents are encouraged to get their kids to contribute. Please see NGC's website for info, and to submit, contact me at jrkohn@gmail.com 858-349-7024 cell/text. I will be happy to get them labeled and packaged up properly.
Garden Corps volunteers: I'm slowly but surely scanning and putting GC binder pages on our Shutterfly website under "Lessons". I'm also expanding our garden center in Room 46 and adding many supplemental materials like handouts, flash cards, game ideas and books that you can use in planning your class lessons. And down the road, the plan is to make binders for each classroom with grade-appropriate lessons. That way we aren't waiting for the checked-out binders to be returned. I'm hoping everyone has been able to take their class into the garden for a Fall lesson. If not, there are lots of open time slots on the paper calendar in Room 46. Let me know what you planned and how I can help further. And we will have another training session coming soon for our Winter Lessons, probably in January.
Enjoy your week as we fall into the autumn season. These are my favorite times to be out taking deep breaths of fresh air, with our crispy evenings and mornings. Hope to see you in the garden! ~Joelle Kohn
Week of 10/26 – 10/30/15
This was the week of orange and green things! We started on Monday with Mrs. Lewis sending half of her students out with carrot tops to plant into the garden bed. They are learning that root vegetables can grow from seed and also can be propagated by root cuttings. They placed them in the soil and were in charge of making the row evenly spaced and symmetrical. We talked about carrots and nutrition and were reminded about beta carotene's benefits. Fun times with these smart kiddos!
Next, I puttered around the garden doing more chores (if anyone ever wants to come help, chores are always listed in the shed binder!). Mrs. O'Beirne stopped in with her Kindergartners for a garden tour. They made many observations, especially about the pumpkins in their box, and were the cutest! They were very good listeners and did their walking and looking with their hands behind their back...for the first 2 minutes at least! :)
Wednesday, Garden Corps volunteers Shawna Kirpalani and Aurora Gethin brought Mr. Rinehart's 3rd graders out into the garden. We learned all about leaf vegetables and did tastings of different types of lettuce. The kids loved eating the fresh leaves and learned that the darker the leaf, the more vitamin-rich it is. They planted romaine lettuce seedlings of different ages, donated by Farmer Roy of Sunshine Care and Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class, who planted seeds and took care of them until they were tall sprouts. We called the plants teenagers vs. babies, and made hypotheses about which would grow to be bigger based on their size from the beginning. The students also got to meet our red wigglers - our worms! - and learned about vermicomposting. Ask your kids some worm trivia and see if they can tell you the answers! (How do worms breathe? Through their skin!) They will start collecting kitchen scraps and Mrs. Kirpalani will be in charge of making sure the worms are fed weekly. We had a fun time and can't wait to see their "salad" grow!
At the worm bin
Feeding the worms kitchen scraps
I also had awesome first grade helpers come through at recess. These kiddos are becoming my "regulars"! I love their enthusiasm for learning and helping.
We had an amazing donation from Dea Davis of kids' garden gloves too. Thank you from the bottom of our fingernails! We love them!
On Thursday, volunteers Carolyn Garanian and Lisa Mead came into the garden with Mrs. Dwyer's kindergartners to do a pumpkin lesson. They learned all about the inside, outside and life cycle of a pumpkin by doing hands-on observations and a cutting, pasting and thinking craft. These lucky kids were able to bring home a few seeds also, to either roast and eat, or try to plant. We heard that the other kindergartners who brought home seeds and planted them are already seeing sprouts! All of this fun pumpkin learning was just in time for their Friday field trip. They were prepared!
And last but not least, here is a Halloween smile for you, happy to be recycled into compost!
Week of 10/19 – 10/23/15
Monday Mrs. Lewis came out with her class to learn about categories of plants (roots, leaves, stems, flowers, fruits or seeds?) and to plant radishes, the "Easter Egg" variety. The 5th graders made hypotheses about which color radish theirs would turn out to be: red, pink, purple, or dark red. They also made scientific guesses about which soil amendment would help their radishes grow the biggest: chicken fertilizer, worm castings or mushroom compost. We're all excited to find out the results!
Monday the garden was open almost all day and we had many helpers come through to prune bean plants, clip off pumpkin leaves infected with powdery mildew, deadhead zinnias, and even harvest some leftover beans and carrots. Mrs. Sevilla's class came out to observe pumpkins and match what they read in a book to what they saw in the garden. We noticed how pumpkins have vines and tendrils just like our pole beans, and even saw one bean vine that had made its way to wrap around a scarecrow's leg! It was a nice overcast day, so it was fun to be in the garden.
Wednesday Mrs. Nishiguchi's kindergarten team came out into the garden to learn about pumpkins. They were able to see the outside and inside of a pumpkin up close and personal, even getting a few seeds to take home. They walked through the garden and counted pumpkins that were/are growing (11!). They pointed out similarities, differences, and learned plant parts. And they visited a leaf station where they compared and measured different leaves ("pumpkins were the biggest!"). Then back in class, they learned about the life cycle of pumpkins, putting the stages in order via a cute small-motor skills craft. Now they're ready for their Halloween field trip! Kudos to the Garden Corps moms - Shawna Kirpalani, Lisa Partain, and Shana Eastman - who put this together!
Friday we went into the garden with Mrs. Chambers and did lots of observations. These 2nd graders checked the growth of their cauliflower seedlings, filled out their data sheets, and even had a station where they learned all about worms! It was a great beginning to a busy day. Meanwhile, parent volunteer extraordinaire Scott Lowry finished mapping out the spots for the new shade structure posts n the back of the garden. Soon you will see a retractable-fabric shade over our reading nook. No longer will our stump-sitters cook in the sun while relaxing in the back!
And speaking of extraordinary parent volunteers, nutritionist Anna Araujo-Anderson put together a wonderful lecture and info board, "Where Does Our Food Come From", for Food Day on Friday. She showed the kids how foods start raw and healthy, then become increasingly processed as companies turn them into all different kinds of foods. She even played a contestant-style game with the kids and had them put foods in nutritional order. She taught them that sugar not only comes from sugar cane, but from beets too! I cut up some of my backyard harvest (oranges, grapefruit, kale and bell pepper) and let kids taste samples of these Vitamin-C rich foods. Ask them about their immune system, these foods, and the connection to Vitamin C! It was a fun and informative day, and neat to see the kids really take away some good knowledge that hopefully they'll always call upon in their future. My own son gave me a lecture that night on how we should start eating brown rice instead of white! Great job out there all day, Anna!
Week of 10/12 – 10/16/15
Monday we had two different volunteers hold the garden open: Dean before school started, and Subbu during the 10:30-11:30 recess break. Be sure to tell your kids to peek over and see if the garden gate is open. If it is, the garden is open and we would love for them to come in and help! Tuesday we had a meeting and made some plans to keep growing our garden. Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class also visited the garden mid-day to use it as an outdoor classroom. Teachers - please keep this in mind. If you need to get some wiggles out or some fresh air, you can seat about 15 kids at the front tables to do their work. The other half can be sent into the garden to do quiet observations...all under your watchful eye of course! Feel free to contact me if you want to schedule a time or feel free to just pop in for a quick break if needed. jrkohn@gmail.com 858-349-7024. We also have our Garden Center set up just inside Room 46 (aka Art Rm). There are binders of lessons for the Garden Corps, our Main Calendar to see available time slots, and other garden ideas, resources and books. Come check it out! Wednesday we had two 5th grade classes - McAtee and Seawright - come out and plant radish seeds in their garden bed. When they weren't planting, they were busy being botanists and jotting down observational notes about the garden and about radishes. They learned about the root vegetables carrots and radishes, and about their the tap root, their food storage capabilities, and what the job of the green tops are. (Ask them to spell photosynthesis!) The kids tasted organic carrots and organic radishes, straight from the "grocery store farm", and were able to jot notes about their taste buds' observations! Some key words were Spicy, Crunchy, and "There's a kick at the end!" Many kids had never tasted a radish before, so it was fun to see what they thought.
Thursday and Friday had more Garden Corps volunteers holding the garden open at recess, and the Smyth/Hansen 1st Grade class was able to come out and work on their garden box. They learned about green beans, and what to look for in pruning and pulling out plants when their season is over. Helpers also harvested the last of the romaine lettuce seeds and packaged them up for our future use. Way to go!
This weekend, volunteers Ed Dalati, Steve Hall, Bruce McCoy, Anna Araujo-Anderson and Jeremy Anderson, all headed up by Nancy Bellinghiere Hall, started the build our back fence! Since the Spring, we have had a temporary fence of chicken wire. But the since a gopher dug in where our underground fencing stopped, we have been motivated to finish the fence to keep the critters out (and kid-critters in!). So thank you to this hard-working crew! Amazing!
Week of 10/5 – 10/9/15
There was lots of garden action this week! Tuesday the 6th, the third graders in Nancy Bellinghiere Hall's class got the third grade box ready for planting a their Fall crops. They transplanted the bell pepper and jalapeño plants into pots, made a recipe of good yummy soil for the plants (ask them about compost and manure!), and planted trays full of lettuce seeds with Madi's mom, Erin Davis. We poured the new soil into the bed and mixed it all in. They learned that plants need nutrients, sunshine, water, space and air. It was a fun morning and now the kids are busy taking care of their newly-potted peppers. Let's hope they make it through this heat wave!
Wednesday October 7th we planted bok choy with Mrs. Hibbert's 3rd graders. We had one station of soil-mixing, another station with Bruce McCoy of planting the baby plants, and a learning station with Subbu Raja where they found out all about bok choy and its nutritional value, did measurements and observations of different age plants, and even got to taste bok choy! I had one mom email me that night saying her son announced that he would like bok choy for dinner....success!!
Thursday October 8th I held a make-up training for some Garden Corps volunteers who couldn't make the first session. It went well and I can't wait to see the program up and running. The volunteers were excited too and had some great ideas for us.
That same day, I was able to help with Mr. Carson's 3rd grade Garden Corps lesson taught by Shauna Young. She taught them about a "mystery creature" that we have in our garden! It has 5 hearts but no eyes. It breathes through its skin and it is both a boy and a girl. It eats food scraps and lives in moist dark places. Can you guess it? Worms! Kids were able to see our new worm bin and learn about how the castings act as compost for our garden to grow. And brave helper Shawna Kirpalani let them see the worms up close and personal!
That same day, our master gardener Heather Holland came through Mrs. Sevilla's and Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's classes and taught them about worms too. They learned a big word - vermicomposting - and found out all about these helpful creatures. It was a super hot day in the 100-degree garden though, so we made it quick. We didn't want our wiggly friends - both worm and human - to dry out!
Week of 9/28 – 10/2/15
Minus Monday, this week went by quickly! We had a couple hot days and a couple cooler days, so it was great to be in the garden. Our volunteer shifts this week had us finding bugs, fine-tuning irrigation, and deciding upon Fall crops. This season's garden bed themes are:
TK/K - Pumpkins!
1st - Seeds (beans & peas)
2nd - Cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, chard, kale)
3rd - Leaves We Can Eat (spinach, lettuce, parsley, bok choy)
4th - Flowers We Can Eat (cabbage, nasturtium, maybe more broccoli & cauliflower)
5th - Root Vegetables (carrots, beets, radishes)
I've been working on getting the Garden Corps team organized and up and running. The Garden Corps volunteers who missed our training last week can come to the Make-Up Training this Thursday at 9:00am in Room 46 (the art room).
Mrs. Baird's 2nd graders came out on Friday and planted up the last section of the 2nd grade bed. They learned all about broccoli and added some nice Arcadia Broccoli to the end of the box. It will be exciting to see how big it grows. It's supposed to get huge! Nichele McCague taught the students all about compost and manure, the plants' food, too. It was a great day of learning and tasting. Let's see if any kids request broccoli for dinner now!
Anna Araujo leads 2nd graders in broccoli observations, nutrition, and tastings
Baby broccoli going in!
Teamwork, tucking the roots in
Admiring 3rd grade's bell peppers and jalapenos
There's always time for caterpillar-hunting
A ladybug, probably from the batch 3rd grader Kalena released in the garden as part of her birthday celebration!
We added up our Farmer's Market donations and are proud to add $135 to the fund. We're planning to use it for our back fence (let's keep out that gopher we saw evidence of!) and toward our future garden plans. Down the road, we'll have a California Native garden area, a walking path, a pollinator garden, and many other fun and educational features. So thank you for your donations and support! And if you enjoyed the pesto, here is the recipe! ~Joelle
Week of 9/21 – 9/25/15
Wednesday during recess and for Kids In Action, we had a lot of Hawks help collect romaine seeds and package them in cute, handmade seed packets. It was neat to learn how lettuce, after it is done making its sweet leaves in the spring, will get hot summer weather and bolt, producing flowers. Those flowers turn yellow and then into white fluffy pods, with seeds at the end. They learned that nature wants to spread its seeds all sorts of different ways, with wind being one of them. But we collected those puffs before they could float away, and packaged them up for our seed fundraiser at the Monster Mash.
Thursday we packaged more seeds and finally harvested basil with our 3rd grade gardeners. They learned about where to prune a basil plant so that it will keep sending out new baby leaves from the "V" in the stem. They loved the smell of basil and were proud to know that the harvest was going to make pesto to help our Friday fundraiser too.
Also on Thursday, Mrs. Baird's 2nd graders also came out to tour the garden. They had a great time discovering plants, flowers and bugs in each bed. Soon, they will plant their section of the 2nd grade box.
Friday we did our Garden Corps training and were happy to have 24 parents arrive, eager to learn. Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's "Safari Singers" entertained us with some garden songs, like Dirt Made My Lunch, and some personal essays on garden experiences. It was a great opening! Our consulting Master Gardener, Heather Holland, gave a lecture about worms and how we can keep them to produce nice compost for our garden, officially called "vermicomposting". We are excited to have our own worm bin now to take care of! The volunteers were moms, dads and grandparents, and did a great job keeping up with all of the info we threw at them. We even went into the garden and practiced how a lesson works by rotating through stations. This will be a fun program and is open to anyone who wants to teach and garden, who has passed their volunteer clearances. Please contact me if you'd like to join in or if you missed the training and need to do a make-up session. jrkohn@gmail.com
Also on Friday we gave a garden tour to our friends from the Poway Valley Garden Club. They have been hearing about our program and generously gave us a flat of lovely basil plants, and $200 from a club member's mother's legacy donation. She wanted to help children learn about gardening. So we are proud to accept her gift and continue her wishes. The Safari Singers performed a song, and then continued the interaction by interviewing some of the gardeners. We also set up Sunflower Seed harvesting at the front tables, and some senior gardeners were able to give our junior gardeners some great tips.
And to end this busy week, we had our first Farmer's Market table. It was the night of the Monster Mash - our carnival, movie night and Book Fair preview - and the fare was well-received! We think our colorful food complimented the food trucks and frozen treat stands quite nicely! We traded fruit and vegetable servings, freshly-made pesto from the harvested basil, seed packets, backyard flower arrangements, and backyard fruit and veggies for donations. A nice $130 was added to the garden fund, and we thank all Chaparral families, as well as Baron's, Sprouts and Von's for supporting us!
Week of 9/14 – 9/19/15
Rain! What a fun week! Some of Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's kids ran out and helped me do some last-minute chores before it started pouring on all of us. They clipped all of the romaine lettuce that had gone to seed and saved the heads in order to harvest seeds later. The also found some tobacco hornworms and twisted my arm to keep them as class pets. So those lucky caterpillars made it past my gauntlet and now are living in a recycled jug in Room 44!
We planted cauliflower with Ms. Chambers' second graders on Thursday – white, green, cheddar and Romanesco varieties! Thank you to Farmer Roy for donating the plants. It will be exciting to see them grow. The kids learned all about cauliflower and different ways to cook it, so ask them if they want to try some for dinner!
Bruce McCoy - volunteer extraordinaire - covered the 2nd grade bed with a layer of white cloth over wire arches to protect all of the new seedlings from bugs. Our babies needed an extra blanket! In farming world, they call these row covers. So it will be a little while before we unveil the kale, broccoli, chard and cauliflower. We want to make sure they don’t get nibbled to smithereens!
Mrs. Sevilla’s class came out on Thursday too and learned all about green beans, harvested some from the first grade bed, and were able to taste fresh green beans, washed and cut right there in front of them. It was thumbs-up all around! Mrs. Sevilla also made a pitcher of cucumber water for the teacher lounge with one of her class cucumbers. It was a hit on a hot day.
All of the groups who came through the garden this week had a chance to mix soil for us – potting mix + chicken manure + mushroom compost + worm castings. They learned all about why plants need this for food. They loved learning about manure and castings - fancy words for poop!
Friday Mrs. Lewis had her 5th graders come out and measure the garden. This math lesson will help the kids learn AND help us apply for a grant, because we have to submit a diagram of our garden. They were great with their measuring tapes and got right to work with their clipboards. It was rather official!
Mrs. Lewis also harvested the 5th grade planter box and had her kids clean out all of the summer crops. She pulled up an armful of nice carrots for her class to taste, many spaghetti squash, some corn stalks, and even a volunteer tomato plant. Her harvest is on display for a little while, because we’d like to show it off!
The kindergarten box boasts 4 pumpkins in it! One is ripe and off the vine. We left the pumpkin to “harden” for a week, and will transfer it to a little display in the library to let students guess its weight and learn about pumpkins. There is another ripe one still on the vine, a junior green one, and a small baby one that we hope will grow in time for Halloween!
A bee loving a pumpkin flower
We are gearing up for our Garden Corps training on Friday 9/25 at 10am in the Art Room. We can’t wait to start our new program!
Look for us at the Monster Mash, Friday 9/25 at 4pm on the track. We will have a Farmer’s Market table and will be trading for donations some seeds, fruits, veggies and homemade pesto from the 4th grade bed of basil. We want our Hawks to be Healthy and learn about balanced meals and snacks. Food trucks and Farmer’s Markets go together nicely, right? And all donations will help keep our garden growing.
Thanks for everyone's help this week! Can't wait to get the rest of our Fall crops in soon! Teachers - please contact me if you have any wants or needs about what to plant. I'll put together a list of suggestions and post it in the teacher lounge. - Joelle Kohn (858) 349-7024 jrkohn@gmail.com
Week of 9/8 - 9/12/15
It was a short week with no school on Monday for Labor Day, which meant a long weekend of not being able to check on the garden. But the plants did well in the heat! We're sure glad we have a nice drip system that works automatically to water our garden. Speaking of which, there was a small rip in one of the lines that volunteer Bruce McCoy fixed for us. Thank you Bruce!
A note for mornings before school starts: please only go into the garden if the gate is open or if you are an official garden volunteer. We had some confusion when kids saw other adults in the garden and thought it was okay to come in and goof around. We just want someone on duty in there to watch the kids and make sure they respect the plants and act safely. We'd love to make you an official volunteer though, so contact jrkohn@gmail.com if interested! Thank you!
On Thursday, Subbu and I met with Ms. Westmoreland and her class to plant some Swiss chard in the 2nd grade box. We had three teams rotate through different stations: one station to plant, one to learn about Swiss chard facts and record observations (they found caterpillars and a chrysalis, and also saw that the roots of the plant matched the stem color!), and one where kids learned about soil, compost and manure.
The kids did great, and with our extra time, we went caterpillar-hunting and found a bunch of bad-guy tobacco hornworms eating our tomato plants! Some of these guys were as big as my thumb and doing lots of damage so it was nice to, ahem, relocate them. We learned about their camouflage and their false "eyes" on their body to confuse predators. We also observed that when they eat dark pepper leaves, their bodies are a dark green, and after eating lighter tomato leaves, they are a lighter green. We also found a good-guy bug: a praying mantis! We left him on the bean plants to keep hunting for his prey. It was a fun day in the garden! -Joelle Kohn
Week of 8/31 - 9/4/15
We had a nice week of cooler weather for the beginning of September. It seemed like a good time to get some seedlings into the ground for our first Fall crop, so volunteer Bruce McCoy scheduled a planting time with Mrs. Higgins' class. Behind the scenes, I drove around to our different donors to get soil and amendments ready for our garden beds.
First I followed up with a nice donation from Kellogg Soil Company (thank you Subbu for organizing!) and via Walter Anderson Nursery in Poway, filled up my car with 16 bags of soil (12 nice and new, 4 broken and un-sellable...but free!)
Next I went to Mountain Meadow Mushroom Farm in Escondido. This place is tucked away in the foothills and is quite an impressive operation! They have a large pile of free mushroom compost that if you want it, you have to haul it! So with my Tupperware bins and my 4-year-old, we filled up the back of my Suburban with some good earthy compost and hauled it back to Chaparral.
Then I went back to my friends at Walter Anderson and they, along with Kellogg, donated composted chicken manure, worm castings and pre-plant fertilizer to our school. One more load back to Chaparral and dropped off. (Can you say shoulder workout?! And many thanks to custodian Dana for helping me offload!)
Bruce harvested the crops in the 2nd grade box, including one massive zucchini I plan to cut up for tastings next week in the garden. Make sure tasting permission slips are turned in (PeachJar flyer) and look for me in the garden at recess!
For Mrs. Higgins' class, Bruce added and amended the soil to get it nice and ready for the 2nd graders to plant their babies. He also picked up wonderful kale and broccoli seedlings donated by Farmer Roy of Sunshine Care and had them ready for the students. They chose a nice placement pattern of plants, and popped them in by pairs. They learned about measurements, teamwork, gardening, and even some vocabulary words!
The rest of the 2nd grade bed is ready for more planting, so we'll reach out to other 2nd grade teachers and see if they want to plant up more cruciferous plants. More broccoli or cauliflower? We also have some Swiss Chard that I'm babysitting over the 3-day weekend that should go in next week. Keep checking to see what goes in!
Mrs. Sevilla came into the garden and did some observing, measuring of pumpkins and other plants, and harvested some cucumbers and had tastings. Good gardening, First Graders!
After school on 9/2/15, Girl Scout Troop 8831 worked on a gardening badge in the garden. They transplanted some succulents into pots, and planted some herbs into large pots for our reading corner. We are excited to see how they all grow. Thank you Scouts!
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd grade class did an amazing job during their Community Service Project on Friday. They shoveled wood chip mulch from a pile in the front of the school, hauled it wheelbarrow-full by wheelbarrow-full over to the garden, dumped it, and with rakes, spread it all over the front dirt and between all the garden bed paths. It looks wonderful! They worked hard in the hot sun and have a new appreciation for landscapers and those who donate their time. Great job, Safari kids! You earned a nice Labor Day weekend!
I spoke at the PTA meeting and at the Room Parent Meeting to get the word out about our program, and from that and our flyer last week in PeachJar, got more volunteer sign-ups and even some garden supplies. Thanks to new Hawk family Kelly Ashman for many garden pots, and to the Vranish family for a bale of hay to hold our squash off the wet soil. Mrs. Buhr also donated some kid-sized tools to the garden. Your donations are very appreciated!
Behind the scenes: we are working on writing grants to earn more money for the garden. If anyone wants to help write grants, please get in touch and let us know. Many hands will help us along!
GARDEN CORPS TRAINING IS SET FOR 10:00AM ON FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25th in the ART TRAILER. Our consulting master gardener Heather Holland will give a lecture on gardening with worms, so the volunteers can go teach their classes about vermicomposting. We plan to have our own worm bin soon, so will incorporate this into many lessons. The kids will love it!
See you in the garden!
Joelle Kohn jrkohn@gmail.com
858-349-7024
Weeks of 8/17 - 8/28/15
First weeks of school!
It's been so busy, but so fun watching the kids and parents visit the Garden! The overwhelming sentiment has been how pretty it is and how much it has grown over the summer! Highlights have been:
Garden tours and tastings during the Posting Party. Many thanks to Nancy BellinghiereHall for organizing, and to parent and nutritionist Anna Araujo for tours and tastings. Many kids from the ESS Summer program drew signs for the day, and students Anderson Pierce, Will Zieler, Renee Mercado, Ellie Coelho and Melissa Buerki helped lead the tours and trade locally-grown lemons for donations. It was a fun, successful day!
Mornings before the first bell rings, many parents and children trickle into the garden. It's been wonderful! Many just look, and many want to help. So we've been donning gloves and using clippers to take off dead leaves and trim back bushy basil where needed. Some kids have helped point out bad bugs and we've dealt with them too! Please come in if the gate is open and a Garden Volunteer or Teacher is in with you.
I have been standing up at the Rules and Behavior assemblies for each grade to introduce myself and let the kids, and teachers, know what our garden rules are. I also spoke at the PTA meeting and will be at the Room Parent meeting to get the word out and sign up garden volunteers. Please contact me with any questions: Joelle Kohn jrkohn@gmail.com
Speaking of garden rules, I will post them on the home page
We had our first harvest! On 8/26/15, some first, third and fourth graders helped to pick tomatoes and green beans that were ready to be eaten! The total weight was 84.5 oz = 5lbs 5 oz! Because we don't have students' permission slips on file yet for tastings, we served the veggies to the teachers during their lunch break on 8/27. They enjoyed salsa (tomatoes, jalapenos and chives), green beans in vinaigrette, and caprese (tomatoes, mozzarella and basil). See recipes here. In exchange, they promised to use our outdoor classroom lots!
Week of 8/10 - 8/16/15
Getting ready for school to start!
Hi All,
We've had a busy and rewarding week.
We organized the shed with all of the equipment returned from ESS over the summer. Thank you ESS for tending to our garden all summer!
More items are out of Nancy BellinghiereHall's room and into the shed
Oversaw the construction of the shade tent over our garden patio. Thank you to Thomas Willer, Eagle Scout!
Organized our volunteer programs: (1) Garden Corps with your classroom teacher or (2) Recess Volunteer during recess times. Visit our Volunteering page for more info.
Planning garden tours and tastings during the posting party. Please contact nbellinghierehall@powayusd.com for more info.
Enjoy your last days of summer. It's back to school...and back to our garden!
~Joelle Kohn
2015-2016
Week of 6/6 - 6/9/16
Monday morning we harvested our big pumpkin out of the Kindergarten box. We had a school-wide contest to guess the weight of the pumpkin, and little did they know, but it was actually a math lesson in estimation and comparison! Kids had access to a stack of bricks and knew that each brick weighed about 5 pounds. So tons of kids came out and got creative while making their guesses. After school, my kids helped me do the official pumpkin weigh-in. It was....drumroll.....19 pounds! We had five winners who guessed closest to the correct weight:- Grant in Mrs. O'Beirne's class
- Parker in Mrs. Grant's class
- Kate in Mrs. Hansen/Mrs. Smyth's class
- Avi in Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class
- and the closest guess was Toby in Mrs. Harms' class, guessing 18.4 pounds.
Congratulations Hawks and thanks to everyone for participating! Prizes of gift bags with a small plant, some seeds, and a gift certificate were handed out to the winners in the office. It was a fun exercise and neat to see the students' brains cranking!Week of 5/30 - 6/3/16
The sunflowers are blooming just in time for the kids to enjoy before school gets out. It's been fun to see the kids marvel at the flowerheads' size. And I guess we're a bona fide garden now because we have our first resident rodent! A ground squirrel seems to have dug a tunnel under one of our new boxes and probably is the culprit who nibbled some of our potted flowers. We will look into some natural remedies to send this guy running.Ms. O'Beirne's kindergartners came out to the garden with volunteer mom Leah Caswell, and did a lesson on worms. We had a worm worksheet at station 1, learned about vermicomposting at station 2 (worm quiz and questions, why we like them in our garden, fun facts, and then seeing them in action), and had a wormy reading and writing session at station 3. They read Wiggling Worms, and then practiced writing the word "worm" with a popsicle stick in a shallow box of dirt, digging for the letters just like a worm! On their way out, they got a special treat: a gummy worm! It was a sweet morning!
Week of 5/21 - 5/27/16
The weekend of May 21st was special because it was the awards ceremony for the California Garden Clubs Inc youth contests. We had many winners from the various categories - Luke Stravasnik, Jackson Foisie, Avijit Dhindas - two of whom went to the luncheon ceremony in Irvine: Elliot Kohn and Jacob Spooner. It was a great day and wonderful for these sporty boys to be celebrated for their artistic, gardening side! We took home the potted centerpieces too, and found a nice fat Monarch caterpillar on our milkweed flower...bonus! See the home page for the winning categories.Week of 5/16 - 5/20/16
A group of brawny, brainy, garden-loving volunteers met at the garden to build two more raised beds. I picked up all of the lumber at the Home Depot. They gave us wonderful discounts as part of their community outreach program, so many thanks to the Home Depot! Once I delivered the wood and hardware, Kevin Partain, Lisa Partain, their friend Frederick, Bruce McCoy, and Ed Dalati all got right to work and put together our beautiful new redwood beds. The humongous donation of bags of soil from Kellogg Garden Products filled up our wonderful boxes too. They look great and these guys are rock stars for putting it all together! The garden thanks you!Week of 5/9 - 5/13/16
A week or two ago, my little one found a cool black-striped spiky caterpillar crawling down our willow tree. We put it in a butterfly house and gave it to Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's Room 44 to take care of. It turned into a chrysalis the next day and hung around for a while. Then - surprise! - it emerged as a Mourning Cloak butterfly and was named Friday! We went out and performed a butterfly release on Monday and had fun watching it hang out, pump its wings, get warm, and then fly away. Our first hand-raised pollinator!Week of 5/2 - 5/6/16
Here is what has been growing: springtime flowers and the start of summer veggies!Week of 4/25 - 4/29/16
Monday April 25th started our butterfly week off with a bang! Mrs. Chambers’ and Ms. Westmoreland’s 2nd grade classes came out with volunteers Anna Araujo and Subbu Ganapathy and learned about the butterfly life cycle. They did a cute craft using differently-shaped pasta to represent the metamorphosis phases, walked through the garden on their bug hunt, did observations of the caterpillars and cocoons in our butterfly houses, saw our jars full of ladybugs, and finally ended with nutrition while reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They ate through all of the healthy foods that the caterpillar eats through, and leaned why fruits and vegetables are more nutritious than junk food.Friday will be our Community Gathering. I believe the bottle cap mural will be unveiled to all of the students, our tree donation will be mentioned because it is Arbor Day, and our Busy Bee Award will be given out to 5th grader Matthew Morga, an uber-enthusiastic student who comes to help me in the garden nearly every day. This boy has “gardener” written all over!
Hope everyone has a great weekend. I will be sure to check out the Garden District of New Orleans and come back with some good pictures to post. I’ll see you back in the garden on Monday!
Week of 4/18 - 4/22/16
Back to school, there was lots to see in the garden. The squash seeds that Mrs. Harms' class planted have popped, and the award-winning snap peas grew huge and had to be staked back even more to make room for their next-door neighbors the sunflowers. And our blueberries are starting to ripen. Kate Garver was my first recess helper to show up, so she got the honor of tasting the first blueberry. We got a thumbs-up!Ms. Lewis sent about half of her class out into the garden to plant up a section of the 5th grade bed with tomatoes, most of which were donated by Farmer Roy of Sunshine Care. We now have some Lemon Boys, a variety that puts out nice big yellow tomatoes, and Black Cherries, a dark cherry tomato. We’re excited to see how they grow. These kids learned about transplanting with peat pots and how to deal with root-bound plants. We made some quick butterfly nets out of recycled grocery bags in honor of Earth Day and tried to catch some cabbage moths to study. These moths keep flying to our brassicas and laying eggs, creating those cabbage worms that eat holes in our kale. We had no luck catching any, but we had fun running around!
During the PTA meeting our sister program, Hawks Health, unveiled the recycled bottle cap mural and we were excited to see Earth Day represented in this colorful, happy design. Congratulations to Elle Siemens and Emerson Putman whose artwork inspired this creation, with the final design and construction completed by Dahlia Shalal. It will be installed for all of Chaparral to see on the covered wall by the lunch tables. Thank you to Nancy Bellinghiere Hall for heading up this program and bringing art and Earth Day together. Remember to recycle!
Week of 4/11 - 4/15/16
SPRING BREAK! We got lots of exciting rain the first part of the week and the garden did fine. There were a few spots where rivers of dirt collected, like on the green turf carpet which I'll have to beat! But it's nice to be able to turn off the sprinklers for a while.Tuesday Bruce "Opa" McCoy met me at the school and we planted several flowering bushes on our hillside behind the garden, including lantana, canary island sage, greenbark lilac, yellow daisies, and Indian hawthorn. It was nice that the hill was damp and soft to dig in, and Bruce engineered some natural looking plant wells to make sure they retain as much water as possible and don't slide away in the next rain.
Week of 4/4 - 4/8/16
What a gorgeous weekend it was for some gardening. I hung out in my own home garden cleaning out a bed and replanting it with tomatoes, and now I'm excited to get Chaparral's in! On 4/2/16 I stopped over at Farmer Roy's greenhouse for a "Milkweed Planting Party" with Poway Valley Garden Club. It was a BYOS (bring your own seed) party, with peat pots and soil generously donated. So I planted up a ton of tropical milkweed and another type, Asclepias physocarpa (nicknamed "Hairy Balls" - no joke!), to join our native milkweed in our future monarch garden. Milkweed is what monarchs lay their eggs on, and it becomes the caterpillars' food source when they hatch. The seed trays are currently living on my warm kitchen counter, and as I write this on 4/12/16, the tropical seeds have sprouted and are about 1/2" tall!After the meeting, Ms. Glady's first graders came out to read about "Brilliant Bees" and pollination, to do springtime observations, and to plant their sunflower seedlings along the fenceline. There has been a "potting soil" spot saved for them to compare with Sabin's seeds planted in various amendments. It's not a perfect experiment though, because these seedlings are bigger than the other seedlings already, and we figured out some bugs or finches might have eaten Sabin's seedlings closest to the birdfeeders! So I'll invite that class back out to replant, and this time, we'll protect the plants and see how they do. But we had a great time with Ms. Glady's class, along with volunteer extraordinaires Shana Eastman, Suzie Morga, and Tracee Fitzgerald. We can't wait to get back out again.
Week of 3/28 - 4/1/16
It was a wonderful Easter weekend and the weather was amazing! Our garden held up well, although I lost some teeny lettuce seedlings because I didn't come in to water. So we'll work to reseed them with our recess kids this week. Speaking of recess kids, I had many helpers this week doing so many garden chores for me that I barely had to do anything. It was nice to have so many willing hands on deck.Wednesday the 4-year-old preschool class came out for the first time! Mrs. Chlebowski and moms Julienne Albierco and Jenna Demarest helped make their garden time fun. We did a garden tour, read the The Hungry Caterpillar, tasted all that the hungry caterpillar tasted, learned a bit about life cycle, and then planted sunflowers that they could take back to class to watch grow. It was a fun morning with these little mini Hawks!
Friday April 1st, Ms. Lewis had her math kids come out to measure our future native trail for us. We need to submit numbers to the school district to get this trail construction underway, and the 5th graders were happy to oblige. They came out with measuring tapes and meter sticks, broke into teams, and came up with a consensus of measurements. They were happy, nature mathematicians!
Week of 3/21 - 3/25/16
Over the weekend, I happened to go shopping at the Poway Home Depot for items for my house. But of course, I picked up a few things for the school garden too. I thought I would see if they had any scrap lumber or extra plastic pots to give away, so asked an employee. They called the manager over, who just happened to be Chaparral parent extraordinaire Ryan Domingue! He not only gave us a nice discount, but rolled over a shopping cart full of throwaway vegetables! These "recycled" veggies will be part of our fundraiser on Friday and will of course also go into our own garden beds. We are so thankful to Ryan and to Home Depot for supporting the Hawks Health Garden and saving us ton$!Wednesday a bunch of helpers came out during recess and helped with many garden chores. It was great to have so many eager kids enjoying the sunshine and the company. They planted our blueberry bush and helped get the compost browns and greens ratio back on track. These kiddos are not afraid of work! I love it!
Friday was a "Crazy Day", both in theme and in schedule! First we started off with a Community Gathering, during which we honored Kate Garver with our first-ever "Busy Bee" Award. This is a new award given to a stand-out student volunteer who helps in the garden during recess. Kate, from Mrs. Smyth & Hansen's first grade class, is always there to help in the garden, sometimes by herself, and other times with her friends. She eagerly pops into the garden just about every day, and will do anything that is asked of her and is always happy and ready to get her hands dirty. So thank you Kate, our March Busy Bee! We also honored Adam Dalati, whose dad, Ed Dalati, is a tireless volunteer in the garden, helping to build our fence, path, gate, table...any sort of project that he can take on. For his service, we had a brick engraved in commemoration. Thank you Ed Dalati for your big heart and your energy you put into the garden!
Week of 3/14 - 3/18/16
Another gorgeous week in the garden! Monday was a bit foggy, misty, and shpritzy, so I stayed in and caught up on lots of garden paperwork. I did peek at the seedlings and they are coming right along. Our milkweed in Farmer Roy's greenhouse, along with our own trays at school, are happy as can be.
Wednesday was a big morning for us. We had a Farmer's Market with the bok choy, kale, radishes, lettuce, herbs, and cabbages that we've been harvesting. We also had some backyard donations of lemons, grapefruit and oranges. It was a quick, fun morning of shopping for many of the kids, parents at drop-off, and teachers before class started. We even had peach trees up for trade, sold to us at deep discounts by the San Diego Community Garden Network! This fundraiser was a success, making the garden nearly $200 in the one hour that it was open! We also had donations of gift cards and garden equipment. Thank you to all of the Chaparral supporters! We plan to do another table at the Paper Picnic on March 25th. Hope to see you there.
Week of 3/7 - 3/11/16
We're enjoying our new learning centers. Here is one of the setups before the classes came through. Monday the garden saw lots of rain. I took a couple of photos just to remember how the water runoff patterns look. We may need to put in some gravelly natural drainage paths to keep too much soil erosion from occurring.Next, Ms. Glady came out with her class along with Shana Eastman to learn about sunflowers. They did some watercoloring of their vision of a sunflower, learned plant parts, did observations of flowers in the garden, planted sunflower seeds in trays, and also did some tasting of sunflower seeds and sunbutter on bok choy. We had some first graders learning lots about flowers and finding new, healthy favorite snacks!
Week of 2/29 - 3/6/16
Garden Corps volunteer extraordinaire Shauna Young stepped up to be Ms. Sabin's garden parent. I'm so excited! She organized a time to come out to the garden along with Jen Day and Tiffany Whann, so Monday we did our first lesson. These 1st graders were able to learn all about green peas - sugar snap, snow peas, and garden peas. They did a fun fact card craft, were able to plant a row of sugar snap peas, did some observing in the garden, and then learned about different fruits' and veggies' seeds while tasting all the different varieties. "Red bell pepper is sweet, just like candy!" was one of my favorite quotes! Ask your kiddo all about it!Week of 2/22 - 2/26/16
We're baaaack! Mr. Kolp's class came out Tuesday to learn all about flowers. We dissected a hibiscus flower from my house and were able to study the anatomy via cross-section. These 4th graders went through rotations learning about plant parts and function, observations of vegetables flowering in the garden, harvesting and planting zinnia seeds from dried flower heads, and even tasting and learning the nutrition of broccoli and cauliflower, both budding edible flowers. It was fun and educational!Week of 2/15 - 2/19/16
Happy Presidents' Week off! It was a nice time to catch up and do some shopping for the garden. We installed some poles with hooks on the garden hill to hang birdfeeders. We're trying to attract birds to our new pollinator garden area and to create a nice habitat for some local finches and such. It's fun hearing the sounds and seeing them flitting around enjoying their new birdseed!
Week of 2/8 - 2/12/16
We came onto campus Monday morning with a wonderful surprise: parent volunteer Ed Dalati finished another portion of our fence in the back of the garden. This will keep bunnies and rodents out above ground, and keep out any underground critters too, because he buried the hardware cloth down along the fenceline. He cleaned up some trash piles and prettied up the back area for us. Thank you Ed!!Week of 2/1 - 2/5/16
After all of the rain we had on Sunday, I figured it was a good day to plant all of the California Poppy seedlings that I collected. So if you walked by the garden Monday morning, you probably saw me halfway up the hill, bent over at a funny angle, planting poppies! I put little rock rings around each baby plant so we can remember where they are. Even though they are natives and need to get used to the arid dirt, we will have to water them for a month or two while they get established. Subbu came by during the morning recess shift on Monday, and had kids doing all sorts of fun garden chores. You'll see a lot of plant markers hand-labeled by these Hawks, and know that the compost got a good turning by these busy hands!
Tuesday we had our garden planning meeting and talked about many ideas going forward. There are too many things to list here, but email me if you'd like to get involved with any of our exciting projects: building, putting together curriculum, and garden events during Earth Day, Arbor Day, and Art at Dark. And now that the weather is changing, spring planting is on everyone's mind too, so we're planning what should grow next. We were also in the news this past week with our donors from Poway Valley Garden Club!
Week of 1/25 - 1/29/16
What a fun and busy week we had in the garden. I took a little time on Sunday to go to the Armstrong Nursery in Poway to pick up our donated bags from Kellogg Soil. We spent some family time unloading it and stacking it up for the Hawks' use!
~Joelle Kohn
jrkohn@gmail.com
Week of 1/18 - 1/22/16
This week was flower-focused as classes came through to observe the fun cauliflower growing in the 2nd grade bed. Mrs Chambers brought her class out to observe the different colors, shapes and sizes. See if you can find the cheddar, green, white, and our new favorite, Romanesco. The Romanesco's shape approximates a fractal with its buds growing around in a logarithmic spiral. This is the perfect example of math in nature!
Week of 1/11 - 1/14/16
This week was surprisingly quiet in the garden. I think the kids are still enjoying the outdoors on the playground and the teachers are busy catching up. We also only have 4 days this week and next, so maybe that's factoring into it. I did a lot of background work this week, planning out how our garden will grow and thinking of fun new ways that we can do lessons with Garden Corps. If you are a garden volunteer, please check out our private site page
https://chaparralshawkshealthgarden.shutterfly.com/lessons to keep track of which classes have come out and what they have done. There are also tons of pdfs available to download from which to teach. I have been buzzing away at my scanner!
The Poway Valley Garden Club also had their monthly meeting at Old Poway Park, so I went and gave them an update on what Chaparral has been doing. They are very supportive of our and other school gardens, so get excited to hear about them in action. A speaker from EcoLife also came and taught all about monarch butterflies, aquaponics and sustainable farming. It was very exciting and gave me lots of ideas for our plans going forward.
Thursday Mrs. Seawright's 5th grade class came out to finish up their radish experiment. Between chicken manure, mushroom compost, and worm castings, the kids concluded that worm castings mixed in the soil helped their watermelon radishes grow the largest. With parent Jan Haase, they took measurements of the leaves and the roots and then harvested them to observe them closer in their classroom. The radish charts are completed and hypotheses discussed - STEM in action! The kids also rotated through a leaf observation station, noticing the differences and similarities between kale, lettuce and bok choy. Nutrition was taught and small tastings* were given as part of their sensory observations. And parent Ivy Bruhn ran a fun food-categorizing game. The kids formed teams and worked together to get their answers, all while learning about groups of growing food. Despite the fire drill that interrupted our lesson, we had a fun day in the garden.
Week of 1/4 – 1/8/16
Happy New Year! It was our first week back after our break and whoa, Mother Nature! As you know, San Diego was the site of a huge 4-day rainstorm, complete with a tornado warning! We hunkered down, stayed inside, and did as much as we could indoors. Our garden did great and, unbelievably, nothing washed away!
In the meantime, I submitted many Smokey Bear posters and Tree Essays for our garden contests. They were sent to the California Garden Club, will be voted upon, and if well-rated, will be sent along to the National Garden Club. Fingers crossed that Chaparral wins! Thank you to all of the teachers, parents and Arts Attack volunteers for helping to get these completed and sent to me by the deadline. I was proud to package them up and send them along.
Friday we finally got our sunshine back and I enjoyed getting back into the garden. It was open during the morning, but no helpers came in. I think they were so excited to finally be back on the playground playing! Nonetheless, it was a wonderful morning to do some cleanup and maintenance. I can't wait to get some kids back out next week!
Week of 12/14 – 12/18/15
Time to close up shop for a couple weeks for the holiday vacation! We brought Mrs. Sevilla's class out to finish planting up the snow peas in the first grade bed. They were great listeners and took good care of their baby plants going into the ground. They learned about vines and tendrils, and how certain plants like to grow on supports. They did a great job getting the rest of these into their new spots in the garden. The kids also did worksheets on plant parts and went on a scavenger hunt in the garden looking for these parts and drawing them out. It was an educational morning!
Right after this class, Mrs. Bellinghiere-Hall's class came out to do a Garden Corps lesson with Allison Harris and Abigail Meacham. It was a lesson on leaves and the kids had a fun time learning all about their structure and different plants' leaf similarities and differences. Mrs. Harris came up with a wonderful craft using white carnations and taught how they will soak up the colored water and turn green. These flowers were put into cute glass milk jars and decorated by the kids to become old-fashioned holiday gifts to take home to parents. At another station, kids observed leaves close-up with magnifying glasses and were able to do taste-tests between kale and bok choy, using ranch dressing, peanut butter and salt. They were great students and learned a lot.
I brought out groups from Mrs. Hansen/Smyth's and Ms.Glady's first grade classes to help plant the rest of the snow peas, being that it is the first grade bed. They were donated by Roy Wilburn from Sunshine Care and were growing in their tray for quite a while, thus the length. We're all excited to see how these long tangly baby plants take.
Week of 12/7 – 12/11/15
We started this week with a helpful group of first graders who worked on cleaning out the kindergarten bed. Mrs Smyth's and Hansen's class pulled out the remaining pumpkin vines, roots, and harvested the chives to hand out to all of the teachers as a Garden Corps gift. The kids rotated through stations and learned about tools and soils with volunteer Virginia Garver and Mrs. Smyth. They had a fun day getting their hands dirty!
Week of 11/30 – 12/4/15
Back to school after a nice Thanksgiving week off, we saw lots of good growth in the garden. Unfortunately we had a big sprinkler leak too in the 4th grade box, so it looked like a river had run right through our nice new dirt and baby broccoli plants! Volunteer Bruce McCoy fixed it for us and added more soil to get it back to a good, full level, but it needs to be planted up to get full of pretty green plants again. We're hoping to do so before the holiday break.
Some classes came out this week. Mrs. Sevilla's 1st graders came out with Garden Corps parents Ivy Bruhn and Kathleen Boyer. They helped clear their garden bed out, played a tool-matching game and chopped zinnia flowers off to shake deadheads for seed-harvest. They will learn lots about seeds this year, so we made sure to talk about how seeds get spread around, how to harvest them if they're not dry yet, life cycles of plants and flowers, and whether seeds can be food. These smarties learned lots and were great workers!
Week of 11/16 – 11/20/15
It was another short week with Monday off and the rest of the days half-days for parent-teacher conference week. But during the time we were at school, we planted up the rest of the 3rd grade bed. Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class came out with their leafy seedlings - mixed lettuce, butterhead lettuce, and parsley - and popped them out of their egg crates and into the ground with spoons, a quick fix for small tools! They also planted 4 nice dinosaur kale into the end of the box, so we'll see how all of these plantings take off.
We hope you have a great week off, and enjoy a bountiful feast full of healthy, nutritious food that you can share with family and friends. We're thankful to have such a wonderful group of teachers and students in our garden with us and look forward to all of our future harvests together. Happy Thanksgiving! ~Joelle
Week of 11/9 – 11/13/15
We kicked off the week getting to unwrap two new deliveries of brand new gloves, donated by Dea Davis, 5th grader Ivy's mom. They are clean, roomy, and either pink or blue. The kids are excited about them, and so am I! The garden was open this Monday during recesses so they were first to test them out. Let your kids know that if they want to get their friends together and all go help in the garden, or if they are on their own at recess and don't know what to do, they are welcome to come into the garden! Just do so as long as there is a volunteer inside and the gate is open. Look for our new flag out front!Mr. Staples' 4th grade class came out Tuesday for a Garden Corps lesson. They learned all about composting from yours truly. And GC volunteer Kelly Ashman taught them the differences and similarities between foods we grow by playing a game grouping veggies and fruits into seed, leaf, root, flower, stem or fruit categories. And last but not least, the students were able to be the muscle behind clearing out last year's 4th grade tomato plants. They learned about plant life cycles and that these tomatoes were done producing fruit. These kids loved being able to rip out these monster plants without getting into trouble! And of course Mr. Staples made sure it was a lot of fun.
Mrs. Helson's 4th graders came out for a Garden Corps lesson, led by volunteers Laureen Franklin, Vanessa Holden, and Tammy Oltman. The kids learned about their grade's theme, flowers that we eat, and began learning parts of a flower and which other foods are edible flowers. Ask them about nasturtium flowers that are sometimes found in salad! The nutrition and plant life cycle of broccoli was taught, and the students were able to sample some raw broccoli. In the garden, they even discovered the first flowering broccoli plant that we have in the 2nd grade bed! They had a lesson on tools, what their names are, and how to safely use them. And then they rotated to a compost station, where they got the basics on how we recycle food scraps (greens) and cellulose items, like leaves and paper (browns), to make compost which feeds the plants. They were already quite smart on the subject, so it was fun to see their hands shoot up with the answers! And at the last station, the kids rotated through to help pull out the old basil plants. They were tall and woody and produced as many sweet leaves as they could before their season was done. The kids harvested the last nice leaves, and I made them fresh pesto to enjoy the next day. Mrs. Helson's students were also able to plant nasturtium seeds in peat pots to get to sprout in their classroom while the 4th grade bed is getting turned and ready for planting. We're excited to see these flowers bloom!
Have a fun weekend and hope to see you in the garden during our short half-days this week! ~Joelle Kohn
Week of 11/2 – 11/6/15
November started off with a bang...literally! There was a thunder and lightning storm Sunday night, so Monday morning kids were chatting about their rainy adventures. They even put out buckets to help collect rainwater for recycling.Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's room parent volunteers set up a Mexican-American social studies lesson learning about Dia de los Muertos. Traditional marigolds - or cempasuchil - were planted in the garden by the 3rd graders. They learned about how to break up hard-packed soil, what San Diego's native soil looks like (sand and clay), why they need to amend soil, and how to transplant a potted, root-bound plant. They were hard workers! The marigolds now sit at the ends of four beds at ground-height, and we are hoping they do their beneficial duties in our garden, keeping away bad bugs. Time will tell!
You may also see some surveying stakes in the garden. Parent Scott Lowry has been planning and meeting with PUSD to build a shade structure in the back. It will be nice and long, covering the majority of the open space, but will have retractable shade cloth when we need that sun to shine on our plants and trees. This adjustable shade will be such a help when we use the back area as an outdoor classroom, keeping our kids cool and focused! So keep an eye out for this construction to begin, most likely in another month or so.
We also have garden contests ongoing and due soon. They are sponsored by the National Garden Club and if Chaparral's Hawks Health Garden wins in any category, it will get us national recognition that could lead to prize money, grants and sponsorship. It is a great way to teach kids about different areas of gardening, nature and ecology. Contests include:
- a poetry contest entitled "Croaking, Leaping Frogs" to encourage students in protection. DUE 11/13
- a sculpture contest using Reduced, Reused, & Recycled items. DUE 11/13
- an essay contest about "Why Are Trees Important" DUE 12/1
- a poster contest using Smokey Bear ("Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires") and/or Woodsy Owl ("Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute"). DUE 12/1
Teachers, Garden Corps, Art Corps and parents are encouraged to get their kids to contribute. Please see NGC's website for info, and to submit, contact me at jrkohn@gmail.com 858-349-7024 cell/text. I will be happy to get them labeled and packaged up properly.Garden Corps volunteers: I'm slowly but surely scanning and putting GC binder pages on our Shutterfly website under "Lessons". I'm also expanding our garden center in Room 46 and adding many supplemental materials like handouts, flash cards, game ideas and books that you can use in planning your class lessons. And down the road, the plan is to make binders for each classroom with grade-appropriate lessons. That way we aren't waiting for the checked-out binders to be returned. I'm hoping everyone has been able to take their class into the garden for a Fall lesson. If not, there are lots of open time slots on the paper calendar in Room 46. Let me know what you planned and how I can help further. And we will have another training session coming soon for our Winter Lessons, probably in January.
Enjoy your week as we fall into the autumn season. These are my favorite times to be out taking deep breaths of fresh air, with our crispy evenings and mornings. Hope to see you in the garden! ~Joelle Kohn
Week of 10/26 – 10/30/15
This was the week of orange and green things! We started on Monday with Mrs. Lewis sending half of her students out with carrot tops to plant into the garden bed. They are learning that root vegetables can grow from seed and also can be propagated by root cuttings. They placed them in the soil and were in charge of making the row evenly spaced and symmetrical. We talked about carrots and nutrition and were reminded about beta carotene's benefits. Fun times with these smart kiddos!
Next, I puttered around the garden doing more chores (if anyone ever wants to come help, chores are always listed in the shed binder!). Mrs. O'Beirne stopped in with her Kindergartners for a garden tour. They made many observations, especially about the pumpkins in their box, and were the cutest! They were very good listeners and did their walking and looking with their hands behind their back...for the first 2 minutes at least! :)
Week of 10/19 – 10/23/15
Monday Mrs. Lewis came out with her class to learn about categories of plants (roots, leaves, stems, flowers, fruits or seeds?) and to plant radishes, the "Easter Egg" variety. The 5th graders made hypotheses about which color radish theirs would turn out to be: red, pink, purple, or dark red. They also made scientific guesses about which soil amendment would help their radishes grow the biggest: chicken fertilizer, worm castings or mushroom compost. We're all excited to find out the results!Week of 10/12 – 10/16/15
Monday we had two different volunteers hold the garden open: Dean before school started, and Subbu during the 10:30-11:30 recess break. Be sure to tell your kids to peek over and see if the garden gate is open. If it is, the garden is open and we would love for them to come in and help!
Tuesday we had a meeting and made some plans to keep growing our garden. Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class also visited the garden mid-day to use it as an outdoor classroom.
Teachers - please keep this in mind. If you need to get some wiggles out or some fresh air, you can seat about 15 kids at the front tables to do their work. The other half can be sent into the garden to do quiet observations...all under your watchful eye of course! Feel free to contact me if you want to schedule a time or feel free to just pop in for a quick break if needed. jrkohn@gmail.com 858-349-7024. We also have our Garden Center set up just inside Room 46 (aka Art Rm). There are binders of lessons for the Garden Corps, our Main Calendar to see available time slots, and other garden ideas, resources and books. Come check it out!
Wednesday we had two 5th grade classes - McAtee and Seawright - come out and plant radish seeds in their garden bed. When they weren't planting, they were busy being botanists and jotting down observational notes about the garden and about radishes. They learned about the root vegetables carrots and radishes, and about their the tap root, their food storage capabilities, and what the job of the green tops are. (Ask them to spell photosynthesis!) The kids tasted organic carrots and organic radishes, straight from the "grocery store farm", and were able to jot notes about their taste buds' observations! Some key words were Spicy, Crunchy, and "There's a kick at the end!" Many kids had never tasted a radish before, so it was fun to see what they thought.
Thursday and Friday had more Garden Corps volunteers holding the garden open at recess, and the Smyth/Hansen 1st Grade class was able to come out and work on their garden box. They learned about green beans, and what to look for in pruning and pulling out plants when their season is over. Helpers also harvested the last of the romaine lettuce seeds and packaged them up for our future use. Way to go!
Week of 10/5 – 10/9/15
There was lots of garden action this week! Tuesday the 6th, the third graders in Nancy Bellinghiere Hall's class got the third grade box ready for planting a their Fall crops. They transplanted the bell pepper and jalapeño plants into pots, made a recipe of good yummy soil for the plants (ask them about compost and manure!), and planted trays full of lettuce seeds with Madi's mom, Erin Davis. We poured the new soil into the bed and mixed it all in. They learned that plants need nutrients, sunshine, water, space and air. It was a fun morning and now the kids are busy taking care of their newly-potted peppers. Let's hope they make it through this heat wave!That same day, I was able to help with Mr. Carson's 3rd grade Garden Corps lesson taught by Shauna Young. She taught them about a "mystery creature" that we have in our garden! It has 5 hearts but no eyes. It breathes through its skin and it is both a boy and a girl. It eats food scraps and lives in moist dark places. Can you guess it? Worms! Kids were able to see our new worm bin and learn about how the castings act as compost for our garden to grow. And brave helper Shawna Kirpalani let them see the worms up close and personal!
Week of 9/28 – 10/2/15
Minus Monday, this week went by quickly! We had a couple hot days and a couple cooler days, so it was great to be in the garden. Our volunteer shifts this week had us finding bugs, fine-tuning irrigation, and deciding upon Fall crops. This season's garden bed themes are:TK/K - Pumpkins!
1st - Seeds (beans & peas)
2nd - Cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, chard, kale)
3rd - Leaves We Can Eat (spinach, lettuce, parsley, bok choy)
4th - Flowers We Can Eat (cabbage, nasturtium, maybe more broccoli & cauliflower)
5th - Root Vegetables (carrots, beets, radishes)
I've been working on getting the Garden Corps team organized and up and running. The Garden Corps volunteers who missed our training last week can come to the Make-Up Training this Thursday at 9:00am in Room 46 (the art room).
Mrs. Baird's 2nd graders came out on Friday and planted up the last section of the 2nd grade bed. They learned all about broccoli and added some nice Arcadia Broccoli to the end of the box. It will be exciting to see how big it grows. It's supposed to get huge! Nichele McCague taught the students all about compost and manure, the plants' food, too. It was a great day of learning and tasting. Let's see if any kids request broccoli for dinner now!
Week of 9/21 – 9/25/15
Also on Thursday, Mrs. Baird's 2nd graders also came out to tour the garden. They had a great time discovering plants, flowers and bugs in each bed. Soon, they will plant their section of the 2nd grade box.
Week of 9/14 – 9/19/15
Bruce McCoy - volunteer extraordinaire - covered the 2nd grade bed with a layer of white cloth over wire arches to protect all of the new seedlings from bugs. Our babies needed an extra blanket! In farming world, they call these row covers. So it will be a little while before we unveil the kale, broccoli, chard and cauliflower. We want to make sure they don’t get nibbled to smithereens!
Look for us at the Monster Mash, Friday 9/25 at 4pm on the track. We will have a Farmer’s Market table and will be trading for donations some seeds, fruits, veggies and homemade pesto from the 4th grade bed of basil. We want our Hawks to be Healthy and learn about balanced meals and snacks. Food trucks and Farmer’s Markets go together nicely, right? And all donations will help keep our garden growing.
Thanks for everyone's help this week! Can't wait to get the rest of our Fall crops in soon! Teachers - please contact me if you have any wants or needs about what to plant. I'll put together a list of suggestions and post it in the teacher lounge. - Joelle Kohn (858) 349-7024 jrkohn@gmail.com
Week of 9/8 - 9/12/15
It was a short week with no school on Monday for Labor Day, which meant a long weekend of not being able to check on the garden. But the plants did well in the heat! We're sure glad we have a nice drip system that works automatically to water our garden. Speaking of which, there was a small rip in one of the lines that volunteer Bruce McCoy fixed for us. Thank you Bruce!A note for mornings before school starts: please only go into the garden if the gate is open or if you are an official garden volunteer. We had some confusion when kids saw other adults in the garden and thought it was okay to come in and goof around. We just want someone on duty in there to watch the kids and make sure they respect the plants and act safely. We'd love to make you an official volunteer though, so contact jrkohn@gmail.com if interested! Thank you!
On Thursday, Subbu and I met with Ms. Westmoreland and her class to plant some Swiss chard in the 2nd grade box. We had three teams rotate through different stations: one station to plant, one to learn about Swiss chard facts and record observations (they found caterpillars and a chrysalis, and also saw that the roots of the plant matched the stem color!), and one where kids learned about soil, compost and manure.
The kids did great, and with our extra time, we went caterpillar-hunting and found a bunch of bad-guy tobacco hornworms eating our tomato plants! Some of these guys were as big as my thumb and doing lots of damage so it was nice to, ahem, relocate them. We learned about their camouflage and their false "eyes" on their body to confuse predators. We also observed that when they eat dark pepper leaves, their bodies are a dark green, and after eating lighter tomato leaves, they are a lighter green. We also found a good-guy bug: a praying mantis! We left him on the bean plants to keep hunting for his prey. It was a fun day in the garden! -Joelle Kohn
Week of 8/31 - 9/4/15
We had a nice week of cooler weather for the beginning of September. It seemed like a good time to get some seedlings into the ground for our first Fall crop, so volunteer Bruce McCoy scheduled a planting time with Mrs. Higgins' class. Behind the scenes, I drove around to our different donors to get soil and amendments ready for our garden beds.- I spoke at the PTA meeting and at the Room Parent Meeting to get the word out about our program, and from that and our flyer last week in PeachJar, got more volunteer sign-ups and even some garden supplies. Thanks to new Hawk family Kelly Ashman for many garden pots, and to the Vranish family for a bale of hay to hold our squash off the wet soil. Mrs. Buhr also donated some kid-sized tools to the garden. Your donations are very appreciated!
- Behind the scenes: we are working on writing grants to earn more money for the garden. If anyone wants to help write grants, please get in touch and let us know. Many hands will help us along!
- GARDEN CORPS TRAINING IS SET FOR 10:00AM ON FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25th in the ART TRAILER. Our consulting master gardener Heather Holland will give a lecture on gardening with worms, so the volunteers can go teach their classes about vermicomposting. We plan to have our own worm bin soon, so will incorporate this into many lessons. The kids will love it!
See you in the garden!Joelle Kohn
jrkohn@gmail.com
858-349-7024
Weeks of 8/17 - 8/28/15
First weeks of school!
It's been so busy, but so fun watching the kids and parents visit the Garden! The overwhelming sentiment has been how pretty it is and how much it has grown over the summer! Highlights have been:
Week of 8/10 - 8/16/15
Getting ready for school to start!
Hi All,
We've had a busy and rewarding week.
- We organized the shed with all of the equipment returned from ESS over the summer. Thank you ESS for tending to our garden all summer!
- More items are out of Nancy BellinghiereHall's room and into the shed
- Oversaw the construction of the shade tent over our garden patio. Thank you to Thomas Willer, Eagle Scout!
- Organized our volunteer programs: (1) Garden Corps with your classroom teacher or (2) Recess Volunteer during recess times. Visit our Volunteering page for more info.
- Planning garden tours and tastings during the posting party. Please contact nbellinghierehall@powayusd.com for more info.
Enjoy your last days of summer. It's back to school...and back to our garden!~Joelle Kohn