Please contact me, Joelle Kohn, with any questions, or if you're interested in volunteering in the garden. jrkohn@gmail.com (858) 349-7024 cell. Third grade teacher Nancy Bellinghiere Hall is always there for questions too. nbellinghierehall@powayusd.com (858) 485-0042 x4144 Room 44. We're excited to start the new school year! (Want to see past blogs? Please go to Archived Blogs page.)
Starting off this week, Ms. DeClercq's first graders came out to the garden to learn about weather tools, to harvest their burgundy beans they planted back in December, and to taste cauliflower and broccoli and learn their nutrition. Major props to volunteers Brandi Foisie, Sudha Medak, Kelly Brotman, Bernadette Smith, and Pegah Kasiri for coming out in force!
Harvesting burgundy and green beans #DeClercq
Filling up the wagon & tray #DeClercq
Sudha chops up cauliflower #DeClercq
Quizzed on nutrition #DeClercq
Green bean harvest! #DeClercq
1-31-17 Ms. Westmoreland's 2nd graders came out to learn about weather, to harvest the last of broccoli, clear stalks, and mix soil, and to taste cauliflower and broccoli and learn their nutrition. Shout out to volunteer Shana Eastman, another "rock" in the garden! :)
Wednesday was the first day of February, and Ms. Helson's class worked hard planting succulents and learning about propagation. The plants went into a repurposed cart on wheels that was updated by volunteer Ed Dalati...thank you for the great find! We also learned about weather and tasted broccoli and cauliflower. Thank you Laura Kanaan for running a station!
Feb 2nd was a great Thursday for the Glady firsters to fill up the garden! With the help of Susie Morga, Ann Kutzner, and Amy Durham, they did some botanical sketches, broccoli/cauliflower nutrition and tasting, learned about weather, and planted some kohlrabi.
To end our fun week, Mrs. Baird's class came out with parent volunteers Susan Basinger and Jodie Moore. We planted broccoli seedlings donated by Sunshine Care, did botanical sketches, and did some sampling of broccoli and cauliflower while studying their life cycle and nutritional value. TGIF!
Jan 23 - Jan 27, 2017
There was more rain on the 23rd and 24th so I snapped a few pictures of some impressive puddles and happy plants. I also took a little video of some of the windy weather we had this week. Watch the video here.
Lettuce, spinach, cilantro and Chinese cabbage showered
Bruce "Opa" McCoy dug a channel for the hill runoff to go to storm drain
Deep root watering for blood oranges and mandarins
Blueberry blossoms
By Wednesday we were able to come back out into the garden. Ms. O'Beirne brought out her kindergartners and we had fun planting beets, learning about weather, and tasting cauliflower and broccoli with volunteers Susan Basinger and Tracee Fitzgerald.
1/25: Beet seeds all in a row #O'Beirne
1/25: Riley holds up a beet seed #O'Beirne
1/25: Tracee Fitzgerald teaches about weather #O'Beirne
1/25: Meteorologists in the making #O'Beirne
1/25: Susan Basinger samples cauliflower #O'Beirne
1/25: Kinder cauliflower tasting #O'Beirne
1/25: Kindergartners in front of their edible flower bud #O'Beirne
Thursday the 26th another group of kindergartners came out for their lessons. Mrs. McDonnell brought out these eager learners along with volunteer Jen Day, Ana Leon, and Julienne Alberico.
1/26: Volunteers Jen Day and Ana Leon do weather #McDonnell
1/26: Measuring weather #McDonnell
Friday the 27th we met at the school's Community Gathering and announced our extended brick sale, as well as announced our Busy Bee Award recipient, Raghav Garg. He is a first grader in Ms. Glady's class and happily comes running to the garden any time he sees it open. He is a very hard worker, and loves to do any garden chore, find bugs, and help others in the garden. His excitement is infectious and we love having him as our Busy Bee!
1/27: Raghav Garg gets Busy Bee Award on Mustache Day. We love green!
After Community Gathering, Mrs. Nishiguchi's kindergartners came out to plant radishes, learn about weather, and cauliflower nutrition. We had a wonderful morning and had fun during all of our rotations. I just loved all of the spirit day mustaches too. It makes it tough to do serious STEAM work with mini handlebars staring at you!
1/27: Mrs. N's kiddos check out newly planted seeds
1/27: Observations in the garden #MrsN
1/27: Watering newly planted radishes #MrsN
1/27: Mrs. N schools on weather tools
1/27: Ms. Maxfield teaches cauliflower nutrition
Some recess helpers ran in at 10:30 to work in the garden Friday too. They helped fill Box 6 with more soil, pruned bushes, arranged stones around tree wells, and watered plants for us. What a crew!
1/27: Recess helpers work in the soil
1/27: Filling up the bed
1/27: Prettying up the mandarin orange tree base
Jan 16 - Jan 20, 2017
Another week in the garden with some rain on Monday, sun on Tuesday and Wednesday, and more rain Thursday and Friday. It has been perfect to hit home all of the aspects of our weather lessons! Another fun byproduct of the rain are the worms it brings out. Our Hawks have had such fun peeking under rocks and logs to find our wiggly friends. It has inspired me to make worms part of our next set of lessons in March. But for now, back to weather, cauliflower and more planting! (Feel free to click CTRL-F and type your child's teacher name to find those photos)
1/17: Grant's first graders draw bean plants in our art rotation
1/17: Shawna Kirpalani leads the pea planting and botanical drawings #Grant
1/17: Our friends in Room 9 CS visit the garden
1/17: A botanical artist at work near the cabbage seedlings #Grant
1/17: Grant kiddos trying their cauliflower. It was a hit!
1/17: Grant's class had a fun morning in the garden with Shana Eastman
1/18: Mr. Kolp and Erin Reed wrangle the 4th graders
1/18: Erin schools Kolp kids in cauliflower nutrition
This week in the garden we officially started our weather/cauliflower/planting lessons. The kids were so excited to be in the garden again after a long break and to see what has grown. I will paste in photos chronologically here. You can CTRL-F to search for your child’s teacher name. Click the arrow that pops up, and the site should hop down to that set of class photos. Or peruse all the photos at your leisure with a tall cup of coffee, organic of course!
1/10: Mrs. Dwyer's kinders plant radish seeds
1/10: Critical skills class joins Dwyer's class to plant radishes
1/10: Dwyer: Cauliflower nutrition while marveling at huge leaves
1/10: Mrs. Dwyer explains wind speed and direction
1/11: Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall helps kids graph weather data
1/11: Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class carrots.
The interim superintendent of PUSD, Tony Apostle, and staff tour the garden in the background.
1/11: Chaparral's garden tour even got a nice post on PUSD's Facebook page!
1/11: Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class gets rained on and finds natural umbrellas in their cauliflower leaves
The picture above was our last moment in the garden this week as it rained the following days. But our little plants loved it!
Jan 2 - Jan 6, 2017
Welcome back to school and to the garden! This is the time of year that we start switching out a lot of beds and do one more planting of winter crops. So, throughout the months of January and February, we took the classes through to work the garden boxes clearing old crops, flipping the soil, adding new nutrients, and planting more seeds and seedlings. The classes also did a science rotation in weather and were meteorologists for a morning, recording temperature, moisture, rain volume, wind speed and wind direction. It was a great time of year for them to see all the differences in San Diego weather. In fact, there was so much weather that I had to reschedule a lot of rained out classes! And the last rotation was in food science and nutrition. Almost all of our Hawks became experts in cauliflower and learned all about what’s important about this edible flower bud – that it is in the brassica family and is a “cousin” of broccoli, that it’s full of vitamin C which is good for immunity, and that it actually tastes great! In my informal polling, I figured that about 1 in 10 Chaparral kids had never tried cauliflower until their trip into the garden, and that the majority gave it a thumbs-up and wanted seconds! A huge shout-out to all of the parent and grandparent volunteers who come out each morning to help in the garden with their class. I might sound like KPBS, but this program would not be possible without you!
1/4: Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd graders measure celery and chard
1/4: Room 44 measuring the snow peas
Dec 5 - Dec 18, 2016
Well we started with a light week partly because lessons are winding down before the break, and partly because my little one got sick and I had to stay home most of the week. By Friday the 9th I was back helping, and accompanied my son Elliot in Mr. Nishiguchi's class to their San Diego Mission field trip. Of course I get excited about anything "ag" related, so perked up at the model of the original mission showing the garden areas. That and learning how these early settlers diverted the San Diego River to irrigate their town and crops. We finished the tour at Mission Trails Park and I was wowed by the view and the plethora of labeled local plants at the visitor's center. It was an educational day!
Mission Trail with Mr. N's 4th graders
Loving the model of the mission showing the gardens
Monday the 12th a hawk flock came into the garden and helped clear out beds. We cleaned out the grape tomatoes from the 3rd grade bed and I let the kids keep the green fruit in their classroom window to see if they turn red. We cleared the pumpkins out of the K bed, zinnias out of the 1st grade bed, and started on the tomatoes in the 4th grade bed. We also switched our scarecrow into a snowman for the season!
Cleaning out zinnias. We saved the heads to dry for seeds.
Our winter "scarecrow"!
Removing grape tomato bushes
Cute praying mantis released on bean plants
The final tomato harvest
Another praying mantis, but this one was brown camouflaged on stucco
Peek-a-boo cauliflower!
Broccoli popping out too!
Wednesday December 14th, Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class came out to do their seed lesson. They dissected lima beans, did a Jack and the Beanstalk reading station with Ellen Farrow, and they did our food categories game with Subbu Ganapathy. It was a beautiful morning and the kids were enthusiastic learners!
Lima beans, anyone?
The Scientific Method at work
Some morning learning in the sun
Subbu Ganapathy quizzes on veggies
Mrs. Farrow oversees the reading station
Enraptured by Jack and the Beanstalk
I love this photo of these peaceful readers
I visited Walter Anderson nursery, which I just love because of their fun plants to look at and the fact that they let you bring your dog! I bought some trellis materials for our peas to grow upon and some red and green cabbage seedlings to supplement the cabbage from Mahelona's soil experiment. That class had three red cabbage seedlings that sprouted (a bunch didn't make it after a hot dry weekend) so all of the cabbage went into a bed together, hopefully in time to grow for St. Patrick's Day!
Walter Anderson shopping
Our snowman watches over the new cabbage
The snow pea experiment from Mr. N's fourth grade class grew nicely in his classroom window so it was time to transplant them into the 4th grade bed. There were a bunch more seedlings donated from Sunshine Care so they all went into a row together. It was right after our huge rain so hopefully the peas will take well in the nice damp soil. We also scattered some soaked lupine seeds on our pollinator hillside, harvested from the lupine bushes out in front of Chaparral last school year, in hopes that they will bloom in the springtime.
Mr. N's class soil experiment
Mr. N's snow peas going into the 4th grade bed
Our bean plants had some frost damage on Saturday night
Well, all of the veggies are now planted in the ground being watered so I can go on our Christmas vacation and sleep well! Happy Holidays to everyone and enjoy these two weeks off!
Nov 28 - Dec 2, 2016
Welcome back! It officially feels like Fall, doesn't it? Over the Thanksgiving break, we got a lot of nice rain in the area so thankfully our plants stayed well-watered when we were gone. Our only casualty was that an umbrella blew over in the wind and partially broke a branch of our mandarin orange tree. So I'm having classes harvest a few of those as they come through to lighten the load on the little branches.
Nancy Bellinghiere-Hall and Subbu Ganapathy attended the Rancho Bernardo Community Foundation's luncheon over the break too, where we learned that the garden won a $5000 grant! This comes on the heels of learning we won a $350 grant too from The Village Garden Club of La Jolla in their Schoolyard Gardening Grants program. Thank you to these generous organizations for seeing the importance of gardening in education. Our amazing volunteer Subbu worked long and hard writing these grants, so many thanks to her, to the PTA for "parenting" the garden through the process, and to the administration, especially Mrs. Buhr, for always supporting the garden. We are so excited to finish our native plant trail, to improve our learning space with more seating and tables, and to have a fund for educational and gardening materials. Look for these changes soon! Thank you again to everyone involved!
RB Community Foundation grant recipients luncheon
We started the week with some crispy morning lessons on seeds. Our first one on Monday was with Ms. Glady's class. She came out with a great crew of volunteers and had the kiddos ready to go for their lima bean experiment, the plant category game, and to hear Jack and the Beanstalk. She also had a dad catch a praying mantis that was on a classroom ceiling and relocate it to the zinnias in the garden. Look what happened next! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yGmlLLsmeQ
Categorizing fruits, vegetables and herbs
Some kids pocketed a bean after hearing Jack and the Beanstalk!
What's inside a lima bean?
Testing her hypothesis
Learning about kohlrabi
Our praying mantis finds some breakfast!
Tuesday Mrs. Grant's class came out with Shawna Kirpalani, Shana Eastman, Dianne Benham, and Jamie Stinson and did our seed lesson. They had a fun time outside and even spotted a spider web shining with morning dew! These kids had fun being botanists and hearing some seed stories.
The great lima bean experiment
We always learn better standing near cauliflower!
Shana Eastman leads the categories game
Reading some seed fables
A spider showing teamwork in our garden!
Tuesday I accompanied my son, in Mr. Nishiguchi's 4th grade class, to Cabrillo National Park. There we learned all about the explorers, the military, and the lighthouse. I loved seeing the lightkeeper's garden and couldn't help but snap a few shots of what they had growing way up there on the point!
Mr. N's class learns about the spice trade at Cabrillo
The lightkeeper's garden
Chard, arugula and squash growing
My (thrilled) son checks out their rain collection system
Wednesday Mrs. Mahelona's 2nd graders came out and took part in the seed extravaganza. They are now experts in lima bean innards, categorizing produce into roots, leaves, stems, seeds, fruits and flowers, and Jack and the Beanstalk! Laureen Franklin, Mr. Thatcher, and Jamie Stinson did a great job at all of the stations and we had a fun, fab morning.
The scientific method in action
Learning that broccoli is a flower
Mrs. Franklin discussing myths and legends
Beans, beans, the magical fruit!
Mrs. Stinson rocks the categories game
It's always fun with a hand lens!
The first day of December, Thursday the 1st, Ms. DeClercq's first graders had some early morning garden education with volunteers Bernadette Smith, Lily Butcher, Melinda Huntoon, and Sudha Medak. We did all of our fun seed stations and learned lots! These energetic kiddos really sunk their teeth into all of their rotations and started the day off right.
Ms. DeClercq's 1st grade class
Fun, fictional seed stories
Helping find bugs at recess
Kindergartner Lily got special permission to come help at recess!
Kindergartner helpers check the lettuce seeds they planted
Here are some shots of what's growing these days. We're getting ready to pull out the 4th grade tomatoes, plant up that box, plant the 5th grade bed, pull out the K pumpkins, and plant up that bed too. Some might happen before the break, but some might have to happen afterwards. I have some Christmas shopping to do! :)
This week we had our Friday Community Gathering and I was able to stand up and announce our grant winnings, as well as our awesome Busy Bee this month. The award was given to Addy Drew in Ms. Glady's class. She is always running in to help in the garden during her recess time. Addy is sweet, caring, helpful, and always willing to do whatever tasks are at hand. We can tell she loves gardening and we are happy to have a fun spot for her to learn and grow!
First grader Addy Drew is our Busy Bee!
To end the week's lessons, Mrs. Sevilla's class came out ready to learn all about seeds. They did a great job with volunteer Lisa Partain listening to Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes to discuss garden rhymes, playing our categories game, and testing their hypotheses to answer what is inside a lima bean. So if you hear them throwing around words like baby plant embryo and seed coat, you'll know that the lesson sunk in!
Categorizing foods with Mrs. Sevilla
Mini scientists doing dissections
Lisa Partain leads discussion on nursery rhymes
Nov 14 - Nov 18, 2016
After our four-day weekend, the kids were excited to come out to the garden for lessons. On Tuesday the 15th, Mrs. McDonnell brought her kindergartners out with volunteers Shauna Young and Jen Day and were our first official group doing a seed lesson. These cuties worked on sorting seeds, learning about plant parts and reading a book on nursery rhymes. We had a great morning discovering and discussing the miracle of seeds.
Jen Day rocking the gardening nursery rhymes
Wednesday the 16th Ms. O'Beirne came out with her kindergartners and did a pumpkin lesson with Nichele McCague and Susan Basinger. We had a fun time learning about pumpkins, touring the pumpkin bed to find blossoms, and tasting pumpkin wares. Every little discovery was so exciting and the mood was infectious.
Nichele McCague at pumpkin show n tell
Susan Basinger runs the tasting station
Looking at birdfeeders
Checking out the celery
Happy K gardeners
A slew of helpers came through at recess time over a couple days and helped build a scarecrow donated by Sunshine Care. They used their best engineering skills to troubleshoot some hardware issues and worked as a team to decide how to assemble it. Fun to watch their brains work!
Scarecrow engineers
Thank you Sunshine Care!
Using bolts and wingnuts
These kiddos found a dead lizard so held a little burial service!
Thursday the 17th Mrs. Hibbert's 3rd grade class came out for a seed lesson with Nichele McCague and Kristen Macari. They dissected soaked lima beans and learned all about the baby plant and its food source. Then they rotated through the plant parts game station, as well as through the reading station where they heard the legend of Johnny Appleseed. It was a fun day that went by so quickly, that we had to spill into the 18th so that all three groups could rotate through. Good times!
Cutting open lima beans
Hibbert's class harvests chard
Recess helpers prune tomato plants
Ms. Chambers, and volunteers Subbu Ganapathy, Erika Putman and Julie Martin, planned a lesson on seeds along with Ms. Pinney's and Ms. Bruinix's classes. They dissected soaked lima beans and learned about plant embryos, then rotated through our plant-parts game. After, they rotated to hear the legend of Johnny Appleseed, then finally stopped to do some seed art at the last station. It was fun and busy, and a great way to end the week before our Thanksgiving break.
Seed art
Reading Johnny Appleseed
Standing around the cauliflower bed
Erika Putman points out seed structure
Erika Putman leads the kids through a seed dissection
Tasting a lima bean after the experiment is done
Reading and art
Which is a root? A leaf? A seed?
Gluing seeds
Starting their collages
Nature art
Seed collages in harvest colors!
Recess helpers planting broccoli raab seeds to fill the gaps in our broccoli bed
Thank you Finley Dimagiba and family for your donations of an outdoor thermometer and a rain gauge! This was his going-away gift to the garden before he moved to Wisconsin. We'll miss your energy and fun spirit in the garden Finley!
We had another group of helpers in the garden Friday during recess to help harvest chard and kale. They found the nicest leaves, washed and bundled them, and gave them to the mini-Farmer's Market/Bake Sale that I had been holding Tuesday through Friday out front during our half-day dismissals. We traded the produce and Pumpkin Gingerbread that I have been baking at home with the pumpkin puree from our garden lessons. It was such fun to see the kids so excited to eat something made from pumpkin that they had learned about in the garden. Thank you to everyone for your donations to our garden. We made $155 to buy seeds and plants for future lessons!
Harvesting
Finding the best kale
Washing their produce
My daughter, Charlotte, helping "hawk" some pumpkin gingerbread
Hope that everyone has a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for the garden team of volunteers, for the supportive teachers and parents, and for being a part of this wonderful Chaparral family! See you in a week!
Nov 7 - Nov 11, 2016
We are officially in November now. How time flies! Wednesday the 9th Mr. Rinehart's 3rd graders came out for a pumpkin lesson with parent volunteer Chris Bradbury. They did a dissection of a pumpkin to take back in their room and watch sprout, plus did a pumpkin tasting. These workers also mixed the 5th grade bed for us, adding compost, fertilizer and worm castings to the previous soil to get it ready for the next planting. We had a fun morning!
Something is nibbling the broccoli
Mr. Carson's poor Chinese cabbage is nibbled too
Thursday the 10th Mrs. Baird's second graders came out to do a soil lesson with parent volunteers Jodie Moore and Kathleen Boyer. They harvested and packaged sunflower seeds into cute little decorated packets, as well as did a soil experiment. We'll see how their cilantro seeds grow in their different mixtures!
Mrs. Baird's 2nd graders
Right after Mrs. Baird's class came out, Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd grade class visited for their lesson on pumpkins. They had a fun time dissecting, learning, and tasting, as well as planting some California native milkweed seeds along our back fence for the pollinator garden with volunteers Julia Kahl and Subbu Ganapathy. We're excited to get our host plants going for the monarch butterflies in the spring time and hope that these little seeds are successful at sprouting.
Dissecting a pumpkin
Pumpkin tasting
Planting milkweed seeds with Subbu
Milkweed planting!
The night of Thursday the 10th, Nancy Bellinghiere Hall, her husband, my husband, some other school gardeners, Farmer Roy, and I went to see a documentary called Seed: The Untold Story. There is a new trend around saving and lending seeds to try to preserve the diversity of seeds for food. It was very educational and fun learning about this movement. They announced that the Mira Mesa library holds a seed "checkout" once a month, so I went to that on Saturday and rented beets, peas, squash, and dragonfruit for our garden. The promise is to grow the crops, collect some seeds from them, and check them back in when the harvest is done. I'm so excited to try these out!
San Diego Seed Library event at Mira Mesa library 11-12-16
Squash and Dragonfruit
Beets and peas
Oct 31 - Nov 4, 2016
Happy Halloween! It was a day off for the garden because yours truly accompanied the kindergartners to Bates Nut Farm. I love heading out to San Diego's agricultural nooks and crannies and seeing what wares they are growing on all of their land. And of course, Bates never disappoints!
Pretty Fall pastoral scenery at Bates Nut Farm
Mrs. N's pumpkin experts!
Tuesday we had another reading by Donna Kaptain, this time The Lorax to inspire environmental posters with Smokey the Bear and Woodsy the Owl. Baird, Hibbert, Westmoreland, DeClercq and Grant took part, so we're excited to see what they end up submitting for the contest! Entries due 12/9/16. :)
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Nishiguchi's 4th graders came out with Glori Nakamura and Chris Bradbury and did a soil lesson, paired with garden observations, and sunflower seed harvesting. They were great little scientists and I'm excited to hear how their dirt recipe grows their seeds.
Mr. N's soil scientists
Harvesting sunflower seeds
Mr. N's 4th grade class 2016
Wednesday Ms. Sabin came into the garden with Maha Fareed and Bruce McCoy and did a pumpkin lesson. They had a fun time learning all about this squash cousin and even tasted the makings of pumpkin pie. It was a nice morning with these enthusiastic first graders.
Ms. Sabin showing kids how to try new foods
Opa dropping some garden knowledge
Ms. Sabin will make this her potted pumpkin for class
Tasting pumpkin puree
Bruce having kids turn the dirt in 5th grade bed
Happy gardeners
Thursday Mrs. Dwyer's kindergartners visited the garden to learn all about pumpkins. Volunteers Lisa Thatcher and Dorothy Long helped run our stations and these sweet kiddos had a blast peeking inside a freshly-cut pumpkin, doing observations in the garden, and tasting the flesh and seeds of pumpkins. Fun morning!
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd graders wrapped up the readings by hearing The Greak Kapok Tree on Wednesday in preparation for their Friday tree lesson in the garden. They did bark and tree rubbings, learned all about tree measurements by looking at a trunk cross-section, did an experiment measuring trees from afar using a pencil and a measuring tape, planted celery, kale and spinach seedlings, and heard a story about why leaves' colors change in the fall. It was a nice lesson about trees and I think even volunteer Subbu Ganapathy and I learned a bit too! These kids will be turning in their tree essays for the contest and we can't wait to read them.
Adam and friends do leaf rubbings
Art & nature coming together
Discussing why leaves change color
Measuring trees from a distance
Outdoor math time!
Planting baby spinach
Planting celery and kale seedlings
We had some recess helpers come out on Friday to turn the dirt in the 5th grade bed. They were experts in finding and removing old roots all the while looking for worms! It's fun to have so many helping hands.
Mixing up the dirt
Tunneling for worms
Have a great weekend everyone!
Oct 24 - Oct 28, 2016
Monday this week was the beginning of Red Ribbon Week and also happened to be Food Day, so the garden held a workshop of sorts to teach kids about healthy choices and to "eat a rainbow". Our amazing parent volunteer Anna Araujo is a nutritionist and taught the kids about the health benefits of fruits and veggies of all colors of the rainbow. The students played a quiz game, went on rainbow scavenger hunts in the garden, and also painted a rainbow poster using fruit and vegetable stamps. We hope the message made it home with fliers of rainbow smoothie recipes you can find on PeachJar.
Using fruits & veggies of every color to make a rainbow
Kids learn to eat a rainbow
Red Ribbon Week, red shirt day
Recess helpers spin the compost bin
Rainbows, flowers and a happy garden.
Tuesday the 25th, Ms. Helson's class came out to the garden with parent volunteer Rebecca Cole. These 4th graders walked through doing scientific observations, and learned about soil and how to amend sand, silt and clay with worm castings, potting soil, chicken fertilizer and compost. They did a great job voting as groups on what their mixtures would consist of, and we'll wait and see how their seeds grow back in their classrooms. We also had a station of students who helped to separate our worms from the worm castings. The castings were ready to collect and use in the garden to amend our soil in our boxes, and they had a good time finding red wigglers and moving them to the next layer in the vermicompost bin. (photo credits: Sumehra's mom!)
Ms. Helson explains pumpkins
Learning about soil
Rebecca Cole explains the great worm transfer
Eww, worms!
Getting ready to plant nasturtium flowers
Checking out zinnias
Pollination in action
Afterwards, Ms. Glady's 1st graders came out with parent volunteer Jamie Ferrandi. They did our famous pumpkin lesson and had a great time tasting the pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie mix. The plain pumpkin puree...? Debatable! While Ms. Glady's class was out in the garden, Donna Kaptain was doing a second book reading with Ms. Hibbert's class. They heard The 3 R's: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, and were inspired to make sculptures out of recyclables. So we'll see what they come up with!
I've been giving the dissected pumpkins to teachers to watch them sprout
The following day, Donna came back to read The Great Kapok Tree to the classes of Hibbert and Baird for their tree essay contest submissions. We can't wait to see what they have to say! And speaking of what they have to say, the great Mr. Staples came out to the garden with his class and with volunteers Jena Debrosse, Challen Moffat and Brooke Cornwell. We did the soil experiment lesson, did garden observations and had the kids harvest sunflower seeds from the sunflower heads. Mr. Staples also taught them how to crack sunflower seeds with their back teeth and their front teeth, a must for any baseball player or fan to learn! We love that sports and nutrition came together in the garden!
Joelle needing and adult apron, Challen Moffatt and Brooke Cornwell on duty
Mr. Staples and Ed Dalati rock their crazy socks
Decorating sunflower seed packets
Goofy gardeners
Seed pickers
Might be a scarecrow, but not a scareTyler!
Harvesting sunflower seeds, messy little squirrels!
Mr. Staples' 4th grade class
Thursday Mrs. Lewis brought out her 5th grade class along with Laureen Franklin, Kristine DeMatteo and Cory Schaller, and did a pumpkin lesson. They learned about the plant's adaptations and pollination, its nutrition, and they planted nasturtium seeds along the fenceline, so we hope to see these edible flowers popping up soon. They also did great work clearing out the 5th grade bed, pulling out the old beans, squash and corn that was our "three sisters" bed. We're excited to see how the next crop grows in this bed, which hopefully will have lots of good nitrogen in it from the legumes.
Learning about Vitamin A in pumpkins
Choosing nasturtium seeds to plant
A little seed science
Friday we had our Community Gathering and I was able to award first grader Sofia Turano with the Busy Bee award! She is almost always the first one out during recess, asking what she can do to help. Sometimes she brings her friends with her, and sometimes she arrives by herself. But no matter what, she is a hard worker and very enthusiastic. So we were happy to give her this prize!
Busy Bee Sofia Turano!
Oct 17 - Oct 21, 2016
Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins! It's fun getting all of the Chaparral kids on the same page with the squash's nutrition, life cycle, and how pollination is important for this crop to grow. And it helps get them excited to carve them for Halloween! Tuesday the 18th, Engebretsen's 3rd grade class came out with volunteers Niki Cortez and Holly Norton and became experts in pumpkins. They also planted some iceberg and red leaf lettuces in the 3rd grade box. Mrs. Sevilla's class followed the act and came out at 10am for a repeat performance. They were so enthusiastic and excited!
Niki helps kids plant lettuce
Holly Norton teaching kids all about pumpkins
This bee was covered with yellow pollen
Lisa Partain thinking of just the right words
Looking for the baby pumpkin under the blossom
Recess helpers 10-18-16. Five of these girls said they had never tried a cherry tomato before today!
Wednesday Oct 19th we kicked off our garden contest program. This year, we have a wonderful neighbor volunteer and Poway Valley Garden Club member, Donna Kaptain, who is helping with the contests by reading certain themed books to classes who signed up. The hope is to inspire the students in their pollination poems, tree essays, recycled sculptures, and environmental posters. The teachers will coordinate the works, and Donna will help package and submit them to the California Garden Club. Fingers crossed that many of these kids will earn state awards, and maybe go on to regional or national level awards! We will know the results in April or May. The first book read was Mason Meets a Mason Bee and participating classes were Chambers, Pinney, Sabin, Rinehard, Mahelona and Grant. I think the classes had fun learning about pollination this way, so we'll see what poems come out of it!
Also on Wednesday, Mr. Carson's 3rd grade class came out to learn pumpkins with April Flak and Bruce McCoy. They also planted some Chinese cabbage plants in the 3rd grade box and learned about edible leaves. Thursday Hibbert's 3rd graders also came out with Kristen Macari and Nichele McCague for an extraordinary garden lesson on pumpkins, and they were able to plant some spinach seedlings down the middle row of the 3rd grade bed.
Bruce McCoy teaches about edible leaves like kale
Discussing the 2012 world's largest pumpkin: over 2000 lbs!
Mr. Carson dishes out some pumpkin nutrition
Newly planted chinese cabbage
Kids with Kristen Macari tasting pumpkin
Hibbert's class waters new spinach
Figuring out why pumpkins have scars
1st grade bean plants coming up
Oct 10 - Oct 14, 2016
Another week o' fun in the garden! We did more pumpkin lessons and soil experiments, planted some broccoli, put some beans into the beds, and found a lot of tobacco hornworms. We've also been finishing up the sink area with some pea gravel at the base...thank you Ed Dalati! And a huge thanks to the Home Depot in Carmel Mountain for donating $50 of supplies to us for the gravel, some bird seed, a new bird feeder, a new bucket, and many plants that will go in the ground in the next following weeks. Their community support has been wonderful! Check out our pictures this week.
Monday Mrs. N's kindergartner Audio finds a spider 10/10
This spider has been sitting on her egg sac for a week
Our famous spider draws a crowd
Mrs. Nishiguchi teaches her pumpkins!
Happy pumpkin tasters!
I spy Mrs. N's class
Everyone say "pumpkin seeeeeeds"!
Tuesday, Mrs. Grant's first graders discuss pumpkins
Pumpkin dissections are fun!
It's a 1st grade bug hunt
Discovering baby mandarin oranges 10/11/16
Ms. DeClercq's class takes a turn with pumpkins 10/11/16
A pumpkin walkabout
Checking out cauliflower with volunteer Kelly Brotman
1st graders plant bush beans: DeClercq - green, Grant - burgandy
Hornworm hunters
Ms. DeClercq's class 10/11/16
Recess helpers line up 10/11/16
Helpers add water to our birdbath, donated by Falk family!
Mahelona's kids come out and water their soil experiment seeds every day
Thank you to helpers who cleaned up spilled sunflower seeds
Helping make the hornworm habitat ideal
10/13/16 Mr. Kolp's 4th graders do their soil experiment
Kolp's kids harvest sunflower seeds
What's funny about filling out observation chart?!
A sample of our experiments
Saturday October 15th, Ms. DeClercq and I went to the San Diego Master Gardeners' conference "Gardening With Class". It was an all-day affair with many courses to choose from. I learned all about how school lunches are made up and tips on how we can get our garden certified to bring the produce into the lunch line - a new facet to the garden that we'd like to try! I learned all about pollinators in San Diego and details on how to make our garden into a habitat with the proper plants, shelter, water and safety. There were workshops for enhancing our garden lessons with literature and curating our own mini nature exhibits. I learned how to plant trays for edible sprouts, how to build proper tepees, and all the methods and tips to get students to taste and try new foods. It was a wonderful day rubbing elbows with other school gardeners and I'm inspired to try many of these new tricks of the trade! Thank you to Pam Kirpalani, a San Diego Master Gardener who is also part of PVGC and the Delta Kappa Gamma women's group, for the scholarship which paid Ms. DeClercq's and my way for this educational day.
Oct 3 - Oct 7, 2016
This was our first official week of Garden Corps, and our first lucky class to come out and do a lesson was Ms. Westmoreland's second grade. Shana Eastman ran a sunflower seed harvesting station, while another group did scientific observations in the garden. And at the third station we did a soil experiment, letting the kids fill out a table with names, descriptions and measurements of different types of soils. We'll see which group's sunflowers grow the best in which soil recipe.
Observations of future botanists
Observing a sunflower life cycle
Harvesting Lemon Queen sunflower seeds
Monday many helpers came out at recess and were a-buzz finding bugs for our bug houses. Such fun!
What's in the flowers?
A little grasshopper
Checking out the beans
Who ate our tomato? Looking for clues.
Helping to fill a trip hazard
Tuesday the fourth, Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Pinney brought their classes out to the garden to do the lesson on soils. Volunteer Jennifer Morales ran a station on sunflower life cycle and seed harvest, and volunteer Julienne Alberico helped the kids plant cauliflower, both "cheddar" and "snow queen" variety. It was exciting to see them working in the dirt, tucking new plants into their bed. And they were able to make their soil recipe, deciding percentages of different types of soils in each mixture to see which group's grows best.
Filling out their table on soil
Using their senses to describe soil
After this lesson, Mrs. Hansen/Smyth's class came out and learned all about pumpkins. They enjoyed a nutrition station with our awesome volunteer Anna Araujo and were able to weigh in with their opinions on the taste of pumpkin and pumpkin seeds. They have a great command of the life cycle of pumpkins and were able to tour through the garden finding and counting our ten pumpkins, and their squash cousins in other beds. It was a morning full of learning.
Mrs. Hansen teaches about pumpkins
On Wednesday, Mrs. McDonnell's kindergartners came out to the garden with many parent volunteers and did their pumpkin lesson. Nutrition, life cycle, observations, and tastings were all a fun part of our pumpkin-centric morning and these enthusiastic students had a blast. The parents were amazing and plentiful, so the lesson went along without a hitch. Many thanks to everyone for their time!
Shauna Young dissects and discusses a pumpkin
McDonnell's Kinder Gardeners!
Checking out baby oranges
I spy a tomato
Pumpkins are nutritious
Talia Zeitouni admires a scarecrow
Friday was our Family Movie Night and the beginning of the Chaparral Book Fair. At the fun event, Scott Lowry and I manned a table with bouquets of flowers, packets of seeds, handmade cards, and vegetables and herbs from the garden, all available for donation. Baron's Market came out with an adjacent booth in support of nutrition and healthy foods, and gave away apples, oranges and persimmons. And Devin Giorgetta, a local scout, set up a booth with a gatorade/water bottle ring toss game. All money raised at his booth will go towards his Eagle Scout project of installing native plants and signage along our trail behind the garden. We had a fun time at this event and appreciate all of the Hawk support!
Scott Lowry hawks garden goods
Barons shows their support
Eagle Scout project fundraising
Donations keep our garden going. Thank you!
The happy recipient of a spaghetti squash!
The crowd checking things out
Joelle and Scott working the table
Sept 26 - Oct 1, 2016
We started the week with Mrs. Voorhees' TK class coming out for a fun lesson on pumpkins. Volunteers Bruce McCoy and Subbu Ganapathy ran stations, and together we learned all about pumpkins and the life cycle, what they look like on the inside, and even what they tasted like! Kids got to sample pumpkin puree versus pumpkin pie mixture, both from a fresh can! The pie flavor won, and the kids learned the nutritional value of pumpkins. We also had a station where we buried fruit and vegetable scraps, paper scraps, and plastic and aluminum scraps. We discussed what happens with our trash once the trash trucks take it away, and how things decompose over time. So in a few weeks, we'll dig up our trash and see what happened to it. It's an exciting experiment!
Bruce "Opa" McCoy teaches all about pumpkins
TKers about to start the tour
Scientific observations of zinnias
Subbu running nutrition station
Ready to learn!
Discussing recycling
Checking out a pumpkin up close
Kitchen scraps vs paper experiment
Burying the mini landfill
Exploring the garden
Learning the pumpkin life cycle
Also on Monday, the garden stayed open at recess and some helpers came in to bug-hunt. A tomato hornworm was discovered, much to these boys' joy!
It was on the ground trying to burrow to change into a moth
Tomato hornworms are exciting!
Our amazing volunteer dad, Ed Dalati, also worked on bricking the area around our sink on Tuesday, finishing on Saturday. This once soggy, uneven area will now be a wonderful spot for kids to line up, wash hands, and rinse veggies. Check out its progress! Thank you Ed! And thank you Scott Lowry for the brick donation.
Ed Dalati and bricks "before"
...and bricks "during"
Ed and his brickwork "after"
And speaking of awesome volunteers, on Saturday Kevin Partain, Bruce McCoy, Steve Hall and Nancy BellinghiereHall spent an entire 8:30am - 4:00pm day in the garden building this amazing gazebo. The gazebo comes from our local Costco and its construction is like that of a small house! So kudos to these builders, now with bigger stronger biceps and shoulders! The gazebo was purchased with grant money that our wonderful grantwriter Subbu Ganapathy procured, and we are so excited to now have a shaded outdoor classroom in which our Hawks can learn. Thank you to everyone for all of your hard work! This garden team, or should I say family, is AWE-SOME!
On Wednesday the 28th, volunteer Leah Caswell organized Mrs. Chlebowski's 4 year old preschoolers to come out and do a garden observation. We walked through with these littles and discussed everything that we saw. It was such fun hearing their excitement and they especially loved taking turns spinning the compost. We can't wait to do it again!
Talking pumpkins
Looking at pumpkins
A garden parade
Tiptoe through the zinnias
Vermicomposting
A worm quiz
Thursday September 29th we had another training session for those volunteers who missed the first one. It's so fun to meet these new parents who are excited to help in the garden and to hear all of their stories, some trying gardening for the first time, and others who grew up with grandparents who gardened. We run the gamut, but the bottom line is that we will all have fun out there and learn together! Welcome to Garden Corps, officially starting October 3rd..
Sept 19 - 23, 2016
I am on a vacation to Germany for a week and have been snapping some garden-y pictures that I thought I'd share! It's raining here, so the plants are quite happy.
Window boxes everywhere with ivy, geraniums, etc.
More pretty window boxes in Marienplatz
A cute shop in Abensberg
Oktoberfest is underway, so the harvest celebration and beer are definitely the theme. Right outside of Munich, in the Bavaria region, is the world's biggest and best area for growing hops, an ingredient in beer. So the Germans decorate with garlands of hops.
An Oktoberfest arrangement in the hotel lobby
Hops decorating the bar
We went on a countryside ride and got to see the fields of hops, corn, sunflowers and asparagus. The hops grow in long vines and the farmers build 20-foot high supports which are so impressive!
Corn fields
Asparagus fields
Support for the hops
A field of hops in the Hallertau area. See how small the man is on the road?
We went to an art gallery brewery in Abensberg called the Kuchlbauer Turm (Tower). The brewery-owning family commissioned the tower to be built by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), who was a famous painter, an architect, and an environmentalist. Although his designs are bright and blocky, he liked to work alone in nature and try to incorporate trees and plants in his work.
Intentional trees growing out of the tower
Irinaland Over the Balkan, 1969
The art gallery was built around an old brewery, first started in 1300. They get their barley from the Jurassic hills north of Abensberg, their wheat from the "Gauboden", one of southern Germany's largest wheat-planting areas, and their mineral water from a well on their property. The tower is also a whimsical home to imaginary dwarves, making this a fun spot for kids to visit.
I'll be working on garden lessons on the plane ride home, so will jump into the new Garden Corps session on Monday with both feet (if I'm not jet-lagged!). See you then! Auf wiedersehen!
Sept 12 - 16, 2016
Monday some helpers came through at recess and pruned our Lemon Queen sunflower plant, all nice and dried and ready to harvest its seeds. They did a great job clipping away. Another couple students helped transplant some mature chard from the 2nd grade box into the new box in back. Now we'll be able to watch the new chard grow next to the old chard and learn about perennial plants.
Harvesting Lemon Queen Sunflower heads
Pruning powdery mildew leaves
Chard roots look like carrots!
Transplanting chard
Kale and chard, young and old!
Tuesday September 13th we had our Garden Corps training. Thank you to all of the volunteers who came out for that. Nancy Bellinghiere Hall and I loved seeing new faces, returning faces, and were excited to share the program with you and hear your stories and feedback. I will get everyone signed on to our Shutterfly site, and put our teacher sign-up sheets out as soon as I'm back from my vacation, and we will start our program up full force soon!
Also on Tuesday, my daughter Charlotte and I turned the soil in the 2nd grade box, added 3 bags of potting soil, a bag of compost, a bag of worm castings, and a bag of chicken fertilizer, to get it nice and ready for the next plantings. Ms. Glady's classroom came out and did a garden tour of observations too. They had a great eye for bugs and found a very well-camouflaged praying mantis on the zinnia flowers!
Thank you Kellogg Soil for your donation!
Botanists and etymologists in the making!
Can you spot the praying mantis?
This guy is easier to see on the bean leaves
Tuesday was a busy day with yet another class coming through. Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall let her star student choose a subject to study during their extra time. He picked math, so they came out to the garden and worked on some problems like perimeter, area, and spacing of plants. Here is a quick video I took of it. It was so neat to hear them work through their math problems in real time, and hopefully being surrounded by the garden will help the lesson sink in.
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd graders
Figuring out math problems hands-on
On Wednesday Ms. Westmoreland's 2nd graders did a lesson with parent volunteer Shana Eastman and were able to taste the broccoli harvested last week, with and without a little bit of ranch dressing! They learned all about its nutrition, and were excited to plant a new crop of baby broccoli in new spots in the bed. Another rotation was spent doing scientific observations in the garden, and each student got to work on a broccoli worksheet to reinforce sensory observations and nutrition. It was a fun time, and it's always so gratifying to see a nice new row of veggies. We covered them with a shade cloth since the weather has been so sunny, and will wait to see how they grow.
Spacing out where the broccoli will go
Learning broccoli nutrition
Tasting broccoli grown in our garden
Mrs. O'Bierne's kindergartners came through for an observation tour. They spent time noticing plants, bugs, and using their senses. I happened to be putting some organic kitchen scraps into the compost, so they gathered around to watch and learned about how we recycle food instead of throwing it away. Each child had a chance to turn our compost bin also, to help mix it and get the important oxygen it needs to decompose the scraps. It was an exciting surprise visit for all!
Here comes the parade!
Sept 5 - 9, 2016
Hope everyone had a nice three day weekend over Labor Day. Even though our week was short, it didn't stop us from getting out in the garden. Our volunteers opened the gate during recess and let the kids explore and help out with garden chores. Bruce McCoy relocated some mature kale plants to the new back box to see if they would transplant well. They are next to the small kale and chard plants, so will be a nice comparison. Mrs. Higgins' second graders and parent volunteer Scott Lowry came out on Thursday and did a lesson on dirt. In class, she showed them a wonderful soil video and then they talked through all of the types of soil one might find. Then we did an experiment in the garden, letting the three groups each make a "recipe" of potting soil, sand, chicken fertilizer, worm castings and native soil. They made a table of their data, using descriptions and measurements, and then planted their just-harvested sunflower seeds from another station. They will grow them in their classroom and take more measurements, to see which group's flowers grew and try to conclude why. They also did a "rainbow" scavenger hunt, finding things in the garden of all the colors of the rainbow. It was a fun lesson and I can't wait to see how their experiment turns out!
Harvesting sunflower seeds
Gloves on to work in soil!
Mrs. Higgins discusses soil experiment
Off to grow their sunflower seeds
Friday, Mrs. McDonnell's class came out in the morning to harvest the pumpkin that grew through the kindergarten fence over the summer, and to do a garden tour with parent volunteer Jennifer Day. We showed them what was growing where and let these little scientists come up with observations of what they saw, making hypotheses about why things were the way they described. It's so much fun seeing their excitement and hearing their comments. For instance, one little boy was taking a guess at what the instrument was sticking out of the compost. I gave him a hint that it measured something, told him it started with the root "thermo-", and he guessed it measured the stink! Valid guess! I actually wish we had a stinkometer. Maybe one of these little guys will invent one some day!
Kindergartners study a tomato hornworm
McDonnell's class shows the pumpkin cut from the fence
A couple eager student volunteers came out from Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class to help me harvest the crowns and then clear out the old broccoli plants from the 2nd grade bed. They had fun playing tug-o-war with the broccoli roots and were amazed to see the shape and size of the plant underground. These boys hauled the plants off to the compost for me and were great helpers.
Harvesting broccoli
Shaking off the roots
Hauling away these giants!
August 29 - Sept 2, 2016
This week I had fun holding the garden open for kids at recess. They just love coming in to check things out. There was a lot of behind the scenes planning of the garden, cleaning out the shed, and figuring out curriculum. I'm working hard to organize our garden lessons to line up with the national science standards so that our garden truly is an outdoor classroom for our grade school teachers. Just about every lesson we have done in the garden follows the themes that elementary school children need to learn - scientific method, life cycles, adaptations and habitats, etc - but it's nice to delve in a little deeper and really help the teachers teach these important theories hands-on. I'm also filling out an application to go to the San Diego Master Gardeners all-day school garden training in October, of which I can't wait to share what I learn with the other Garden Corps volunteers. Speaking of which, Garden Corps volunteer training will be Tuesday September 13th at 9:00am in Room 46. I'll see you there!
Bug hunting in the tomato plants!
The kale and chard babies are happy in their new home
August 16 - 26, 2016
Welcome back to school!! As we recruit volunteers and get our program organized, we have been busy straightening up the garden. For the Posting Party, we toured families through the garden with the wonderful help of our former student Matthew Morga. It was fun showing everyone how things grew, and seeing plants' life cycle as they end out the summer season. We held a Farmer's Market and bartered tomatoes, squash, lemons, figs and kale. In the MPR at our garden booth, we traded seeds and greeting cards too, and earned some nice maintenance money to start off the year. Thank you to volunteers Subbu and Anna for working the event, and to Roy Wilburn of Sunshine Care for produce donations.
Our first lesson was on August 26th with Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's new third graders. They came out to help clear the 3rd grade bed of nasturtiums, collect seeds, compost, make scientific observations, and plant new seeds of spinach and kale, plus seedlings of broccoli and kale. Besides the radishes of summer, these will be the first crops planted in our new beds. We're excited to see how our leafy green seeds vs. seedling experiment works out!
It's fun to rip out plants!
Clearing Bed 3
Making observations
The CS classes visit the garden
Old nasturtium plants added into compost
Ms. Anna talks seeds
Planting kale and spinach
Planting kale and chard
Finding bugs!
Another bug. Friend or foe?
Summer 2016
Here are photos of what went on during the summer in the Hawks Health Garden. We made a schedule of who would come in to water and tend to the garden, and the lovely Nancy Bellinghiere Hall, Subbu Ganapathy, Anna Araujo-Anderson, Bruce McCoy, Erin Baird, and Mr. Chris and the ESS Garden Club signed up. Thank you to everyone for keeping the garden going during this incredibly hot summer! You'll see that the heat took its toll, but the plants for the most part did just fine!
6-20-16: Our favorite irrigation expert, Mark Devlin, continues installing driplines.
6-20-16: Nancy conferring with Mark
6-21-16: Mourning Cloak butterflies emerging from their chrysalises in courtyard
6-22-16: Kellogg Soil Products donation being delivered
6-22-16: Kellogg drivers stand by their products. Thank you!!
6-23-16 Corn and bean sisters growing nicely!
6-29-16: Garden tour day. Robert Saxton of Abraxas shows us crops.
6-29-16: Garden Tour at Chaparral. Roy Wilburn of Sunshine Care & Poway Valley Garden Club, Gisele Shoniger of Kellogg Soil, Joelle Kohn, Reinhold Mueller of Innovations Academy, Shelby Canino of Westwood Elementary.
6-29-16: Garden Tour at Chaparral
6-29-16: Garden Tour. Nancy Bellinghiere Hall of Chaparral and Tammy Harmon of Painted Rock Elementary join in the talk.
6-30-16: Nancy, Elliot and Toby pick nasturtium
6-30-16: Elliot holds a very large radish!
6-30-16: Toby, Nancy and Elliot move the blueberry bush into the shade
6-30-16: Sunflowers lean
6-30-16: Monarch on native buckwheat on our hill
6-30-16: Monarch close-up
6-30-16: Meeting with Eagle Scout Devin Giorgetta to plan native trail
6-30-16: Anton and Lana Czanik paint flower pots.Lana lost hers during her 5th grade class time, so this was a re-do!
7-17-16: Poway Valley Youth Garden Club meeting at my house
7-17-16: Roy Wilburn gets hit with a water balloon!
7-18-16: Nursing the native milkweed at home this summer
7-23-16: Garden Coordinator Meeting where we are all sharing ideas and ways to streamline PUSD school gardens
7-23-16: Michaelle Stamp, Nay Flinn from Turtleback Elem. Nicole Moore from Monterey Ridge
7-23-16: Reinhold Mueller from Innovations Academy, Robert Saxton from Abraxas, Shelby Canino from Westwood Elementary
7-23-16: Roy Wilburn of Sunshine Care, Jane Radatz of Backyard Produce Project, Jessica Page from Highland Ranch, Nancy Bellinghiere Hall and Joelle Kohn of Chaparral
7-23-16: Tammy Harmon of Painted Rock and Ella German of Rolling Hills
7-23-16: Lemon Queen sunflowers
7-23-16: Mammoth Sunflowers leaning more and more
7-23-16: Zinnia in 1st grade bed
7-23-16: Bicolor sunflower seedlings from our Farmer's Market that I planted in my yard this summer. Hope yours turned out pretty too!
7-23-16: Another gladiola bloomed by the classroom wall!
7:23-16: ESS planted radishes in the new beds
7-23-16: A couple of the pumpkins that got huge over the summer!
Want to see past blogs? Please go to Archived Blogs page.
(Want to see past blogs? Please go to Archived Blogs page.)
Starting off this week, Ms. DeClercq's first graders came out to the garden to learn about weather tools, to harvest their burgundy beans they planted back in December, and to taste cauliflower and broccoli and learn their nutrition. Major props to volunteers Brandi Foisie, Sudha Medak, Kelly Brotman, Bernadette Smith, and Pegah Kasiri for coming out in force!
Jan 23 - Jan 27, 2017
There was more rain on the 23rd and 24th so I snapped a few pictures of some impressive puddles and happy plants. I also took a little video of some of the windy weather we had this week. Watch the video here.Jan 16 - Jan 20, 2017
Another week in the garden with some rain on Monday, sun on Tuesday and Wednesday, and more rain Thursday and Friday. It has been perfect to hit home all of the aspects of our weather lessons! Another fun byproduct of the rain are the worms it brings out. Our Hawks have had such fun peeking under rocks and logs to find our wiggly friends. It has inspired me to make worms part of our next set of lessons in March. But for now, back to weather, cauliflower and more planting! (Feel free to click CTRL-F and type your child's teacher name to find those photos)
Jan 9 - Jan 13, 2017
This week in the garden we officially started our weather/cauliflower/planting lessons. The kids were so excited to be in the garden again after a long break and to see what has grown. I will paste in photos chronologically here. You can CTRL-F to search for your child’s teacher name. Click the arrow that pops up, and the site should hop down to that set of class photos. Or peruse all the photos at your leisure with a tall cup of coffee, organic of course!
1/11: Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's class carrots.
The interim superintendent of PUSD, Tony Apostle, and staff tour the garden in the background.
The picture above was our last moment in the garden this week as it rained the following days. But our little plants loved it!
Jan 2 - Jan 6, 2017
Welcome back to school and to the garden! This is the time of year that we start switching out a lot of beds and do one more planting of winter crops. So, throughout the months of January and February, we took the classes through to work the garden boxes clearing old crops, flipping the soil, adding new nutrients, and planting more seeds and seedlings. The classes also did a science rotation in weather and were meteorologists for a morning, recording temperature, moisture, rain volume, wind speed and wind direction. It was a great time of year for them to see all the differences in San Diego weather. In fact, there was so much weather that I had to reschedule a lot of rained out classes! And the last rotation was in food science and nutrition. Almost all of our Hawks became experts in cauliflower and learned all about what’s important about this edible flower bud – that it is in the brassica family and is a “cousin” of broccoli, that it’s full of vitamin C which is good for immunity, and that it actually tastes great! In my informal polling, I figured that about 1 in 10 Chaparral kids had never tried cauliflower until their trip into the garden, and that the majority gave it a thumbs-up and wanted seconds! A huge shout-out to all of the parent and grandparent volunteers who come out each morning to help in the garden with their class. I might sound like KPBS, but this program would not be possible without you!
Dec 5 - Dec 18, 2016
Well we started with a light week partly because lessons are winding down before the break, and partly because my little one got sick and I had to stay home most of the week. By Friday the 9th I was back helping, and accompanied my son Elliot in Mr. Nishiguchi's class to their San Diego Mission field trip. Of course I get excited about anything "ag" related, so perked up at the model of the original mission showing the garden areas. That and learning how these early settlers diverted the San Diego River to irrigate their town and crops. We finished the tour at Mission Trails Park and I was wowed by the view and the plethora of labeled local plants at the visitor's center. It was an educational day!Nov 28 - Dec 2, 2016
Welcome back! It officially feels like Fall, doesn't it? Over the Thanksgiving break, we got a lot of nice rain in the area so thankfully our plants stayed well-watered when we were gone. Our only casualty was that an umbrella blew over in the wind and partially broke a branch of our mandarin orange tree. So I'm having classes harvest a few of those as they come through to lighten the load on the little branches.Nancy Bellinghiere-Hall and Subbu Ganapathy attended the Rancho Bernardo Community Foundation's luncheon over the break too, where we learned that the garden won a $5000 grant! This comes on the heels of learning we won a $350 grant too from The Village Garden Club of La Jolla in their Schoolyard Gardening Grants program. Thank you to these generous organizations for seeing the importance of gardening in education. Our amazing volunteer Subbu worked long and hard writing these grants, so many thanks to her, to the PTA for "parenting" the garden through the process, and to the administration, especially Mrs. Buhr, for always supporting the garden. We are so excited to finish our native plant trail, to improve our learning space with more seating and tables, and to have a fund for educational and gardening materials. Look for these changes soon! Thank you again to everyone involved!
Nov 14 - Nov 18, 2016
After our four-day weekend, the kids were excited to come out to the garden for lessons. On Tuesday the 15th, Mrs. McDonnell brought her kindergartners out with volunteers Shauna Young and Jen Day and were our first official group doing a seed lesson. These cuties worked on sorting seeds, learning about plant parts and reading a book on nursery rhymes. We had a great morning discovering and discussing the miracle of seeds.Nov 7 - Nov 11, 2016
We are officially in November now. How time flies! Wednesday the 9th Mr. Rinehart's 3rd graders came out for a pumpkin lesson with parent volunteer Chris Bradbury. They did a dissection of a pumpkin to take back in their room and watch sprout, plus did a pumpkin tasting. These workers also mixed the 5th grade bed for us, adding compost, fertilizer and worm castings to the previous soil to get it ready for the next planting. We had a fun morning!Oct 31 - Nov 4, 2016
Happy Halloween! It was a day off for the garden because yours truly accompanied the kindergartners to Bates Nut Farm. I love heading out to San Diego's agricultural nooks and crannies and seeing what wares they are growing on all of their land. And of course, Bates never disappoints!Also on Tuesday, Mr. Nishiguchi's 4th graders came out with Glori Nakamura and Chris Bradbury and did a soil lesson, paired with garden observations, and sunflower seed harvesting. They were great little scientists and I'm excited to hear how their dirt recipe grows their seeds.
Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's 3rd graders wrapped up the readings by hearing The Greak Kapok Tree on Wednesday in preparation for their Friday tree lesson in the garden. They did bark and tree rubbings, learned all about tree measurements by looking at a trunk cross-section, did an experiment measuring trees from afar using a pencil and a measuring tape, planted celery, kale and spinach seedlings, and heard a story about why leaves' colors change in the fall. It was a nice lesson about trees and I think even volunteer Subbu Ganapathy and I learned a bit too! These kids will be turning in their tree essays for the contest and we can't wait to read them.
Oct 24 - Oct 28, 2016
Monday this week was the beginning of Red Ribbon Week and also happened to be Food Day, so the garden held a workshop of sorts to teach kids about healthy choices and to "eat a rainbow". Our amazing parent volunteer Anna Araujo is a nutritionist and taught the kids about the health benefits of fruits and veggies of all colors of the rainbow. The students played a quiz game, went on rainbow scavenger hunts in the garden, and also painted a rainbow poster using fruit and vegetable stamps. We hope the message made it home with fliers of rainbow smoothie recipes you can find on PeachJar.Afterwards, Ms. Glady's 1st graders came out with parent volunteer Jamie Ferrandi. They did our famous pumpkin lesson and had a great time tasting the pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie mix. The plain pumpkin puree...? Debatable! While Ms. Glady's class was out in the garden, Donna Kaptain was doing a second book reading with Ms. Hibbert's class. They heard The 3 R's: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, and were inspired to make sculptures out of recyclables. So we'll see what they come up with!
The following day, Donna came back to read The Great Kapok Tree to the classes of Hibbert and Baird for their tree essay contest submissions. We can't wait to see what they have to say! And speaking of what they have to say, the great Mr. Staples came out to the garden with his class and with volunteers Jena Debrosse, Challen Moffat and Brooke Cornwell. We did the soil experiment lesson, did garden observations and had the kids harvest sunflower seeds from the sunflower heads. Mr. Staples also taught them how to crack sunflower seeds with their back teeth and their front teeth, a must for any baseball player or fan to learn! We love that sports and nutrition came together in the garden!
Oct 17 - Oct 21, 2016
Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins! It's fun getting all of the Chaparral kids on the same page with the squash's nutrition, life cycle, and how pollination is important for this crop to grow. And it helps get them excited to carve them for Halloween! Tuesday the 18th, Engebretsen's 3rd grade class came out with volunteers Niki Cortez and Holly Norton and became experts in pumpkins. They also planted some iceberg and red leaf lettuces in the 3rd grade box. Mrs. Sevilla's class followed the act and came out at 10am for a repeat performance. They were so enthusiastic and excited!
Also on Wednesday, Mr. Carson's 3rd grade class came out to learn pumpkins with April Flak and Bruce McCoy. They also planted some Chinese cabbage plants in the 3rd grade box and learned about edible leaves. Thursday Hibbert's 3rd graders also came out with Kristen Macari and Nichele McCague for an extraordinary garden lesson on pumpkins, and they were able to plant some spinach seedlings down the middle row of the 3rd grade bed.
Oct 10 - Oct 14, 2016
Another week o' fun in the garden! We did more pumpkin lessons and soil experiments, planted some broccoli, put some beans into the beds, and found a lot of tobacco hornworms. We've also been finishing up the sink area with some pea gravel at the base...thank you Ed Dalati! And a huge thanks to the Home Depot in Carmel Mountain for donating $50 of supplies to us for the gravel, some bird seed, a new bird feeder, a new bucket, and many plants that will go in the ground in the next following weeks. Their community support has been wonderful! Check out our pictures this week.Oct 3 - Oct 7, 2016
This was our first official week of Garden Corps, and our first lucky class to come out and do a lesson was Ms. Westmoreland's second grade. Shana Eastman ran a sunflower seed harvesting station, while another group did scientific observations in the garden. And at the third station we did a soil experiment, letting the kids fill out a table with names, descriptions and measurements of different types of soils. We'll see which group's sunflowers grow the best in which soil recipe.Sept 26 - Oct 1, 2016
We started the week with Mrs. Voorhees' TK class coming out for a fun lesson on pumpkins. Volunteers Bruce McCoy and Subbu Ganapathy ran stations, and together we learned all about pumpkins and the life cycle, what they look like on the inside, and even what they tasted like! Kids got to sample pumpkin puree versus pumpkin pie mixture, both from a fresh can! The pie flavor won, and the kids learned the nutritional value of pumpkins. We also had a station where we buried fruit and vegetable scraps, paper scraps, and plastic and aluminum scraps. We discussed what happens with our trash once the trash trucks take it away, and how things decompose over time. So in a few weeks, we'll dig up our trash and see what happened to it. It's an exciting experiment!And speaking of awesome volunteers, on Saturday Kevin Partain, Bruce McCoy, Steve Hall and Nancy BellinghiereHall spent an entire 8:30am - 4:00pm day in the garden building this amazing gazebo. The gazebo comes from our local Costco and its construction is like that of a small house! So kudos to these builders, now with bigger stronger biceps and shoulders! The gazebo was purchased with grant money that our wonderful grantwriter Subbu Ganapathy procured, and we are so excited to now have a shaded outdoor classroom in which our Hawks can learn. Thank you to everyone for all of your hard work! This garden team, or should I say family, is AWE-SOME!
Sept 19 - 23, 2016
I am on a vacation to Germany for a week and have been snapping some garden-y pictures that I thought I'd share! It's raining here, so the plants are quite happy.Oktoberfest is underway, so the harvest celebration and beer are definitely the theme. Right outside of Munich, in the Bavaria region, is the world's biggest and best area for growing hops, an ingredient in beer. So the Germans decorate with garlands of hops.
We went on a countryside ride and got to see the fields of hops, corn, sunflowers and asparagus. The hops grow in long vines and the farmers build 20-foot high supports which are so impressive!
We went to an art gallery brewery in Abensberg called the Kuchlbauer Turm (Tower). The brewery-owning family commissioned the tower to be built by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), who was a famous painter, an architect, and an environmentalist. Although his designs are bright and blocky, he liked to work alone in nature and try to incorporate trees and plants in his work.
The art gallery was built around an old brewery, first started in 1300. They get their barley from the Jurassic hills north of Abensberg, their wheat from the "Gauboden", one of southern Germany's largest wheat-planting areas, and their mineral water from a well on their property. The tower is also a whimsical home to imaginary dwarves, making this a fun spot for kids to visit.
I'll be working on garden lessons on the plane ride home, so will jump into the new Garden Corps session on Monday with both feet (if I'm not jet-lagged!). See you then! Auf wiedersehen!
Sept 12 - 16, 2016
Monday some helpers came through at recess and pruned our Lemon Queen sunflower plant, all nice and dried and ready to harvest its seeds. They did a great job clipping away. Another couple students helped transplant some mature chard from the 2nd grade box into the new box in back. Now we'll be able to watch the new chard grow next to the old chard and learn about perennial plants.Also on Tuesday, my daughter Charlotte and I turned the soil in the 2nd grade box, added 3 bags of potting soil, a bag of compost, a bag of worm castings, and a bag of chicken fertilizer, to get it nice and ready for the next plantings. Ms. Glady's classroom came out and did a garden tour of observations too. They had a great eye for bugs and found a very well-camouflaged praying mantis on the zinnia flowers!
Sept 5 - 9, 2016
Hope everyone had a nice three day weekend over Labor Day. Even though our week was short, it didn't stop us from getting out in the garden. Our volunteers opened the gate during recess and let the kids explore and help out with garden chores. Bruce McCoy relocated some mature kale plants to the new back box to see if they would transplant well. They are next to the small kale and chard plants, so will be a nice comparison. Mrs. Higgins' second graders and parent volunteer Scott Lowry came out on Thursday and did a lesson on dirt. In class, she showed them a wonderful soil video and then they talked through all of the types of soil one might find. Then we did an experiment in the garden, letting the three groups each make a "recipe" of potting soil, sand, chicken fertilizer, worm castings and native soil. They made a table of their data, using descriptions and measurements, and then planted their just-harvested sunflower seeds from another station. They will grow them in their classroom and take more measurements, to see which group's flowers grew and try to conclude why. They also did a "rainbow" scavenger hunt, finding things in the garden of all the colors of the rainbow. It was a fun lesson and I can't wait to see how their experiment turns out!August 29 - Sept 2, 2016
This week I had fun holding the garden open for kids at recess. They just love coming in to check things out. There was a lot of behind the scenes planning of the garden, cleaning out the shed, and figuring out curriculum. I'm working hard to organize our garden lessons to line up with the national science standards so that our garden truly is an outdoor classroom for our grade school teachers. Just about every lesson we have done in the garden follows the themes that elementary school children need to learn - scientific method, life cycles, adaptations and habitats, etc - but it's nice to delve in a little deeper and really help the teachers teach these important theories hands-on. I'm also filling out an application to go to the San Diego Master Gardeners all-day school garden training in October, of which I can't wait to share what I learn with the other Garden Corps volunteers. Speaking of which, Garden Corps volunteer training will be Tuesday September 13th at 9:00am in Room 46. I'll see you there!August 16 - 26, 2016
Welcome back to school!! As we recruit volunteers and get our program organized, we have been busy straightening up the garden. For the Posting Party, we toured families through the garden with the wonderful help of our former student Matthew Morga. It was fun showing everyone how things grew, and seeing plants' life cycle as they end out the summer season. We held a Farmer's Market and bartered tomatoes, squash, lemons, figs and kale. In the MPR at our garden booth, we traded seeds and greeting cards too, and earned some nice maintenance money to start off the year. Thank you to volunteers Subbu and Anna for working the event, and to Roy Wilburn of Sunshine Care for produce donations.Our first lesson was on August 26th with Mrs. Bellinghiere Hall's new third graders. They came out to help clear the 3rd grade bed of nasturtiums, collect seeds, compost, make scientific observations, and plant new seeds of spinach and kale, plus seedlings of broccoli and kale. Besides the radishes of summer, these will be the first crops planted in our new beds. We're excited to see how our leafy green seeds vs. seedling experiment works out!
Summer 2016
Here are photos of what went on during the summer in the Hawks Health Garden. We made a schedule of who would come in to water and tend to the garden, and the lovely Nancy Bellinghiere Hall, Subbu Ganapathy, Anna Araujo-Anderson, Bruce McCoy, Erin Baird, and Mr. Chris and the ESS Garden Club signed up. Thank you to everyone for keeping the garden going during this incredibly hot summer! You'll see that the heat took its toll, but the plants for the most part did just fine!