In a tree? On the ground? Under the ground? - Where does it grow?

Jungle in the classroom

The weather is hotting up and some of you may be keeping yourselves busy by tending to your garden and getting your green fingers dirty. As some of you may know back in March we ran a workshop where some able and willing volunteers planted a collection of seeds in the hopes of seeing them flourish after a rather cold and harsh winter. In fact one of the plants has grown to about the same size as some of our younger students! As these plants have proved to spark wonder and curiosity into my students I took them as inspiration to include more nature based activities within the classroom.

Enjoying the sunshine

Ideally I would love to have a huge garden where we could grow lots of different plants, especially fruit and vegetables as they are a very common topic within a young learner's curriculum. Plus we could always eat them when we get hungry during class.

Is that a mouse?

Rather than dwelling on the fact that we are inhibited by a lack of gardening space me and my students turned instead to the next best thing. Our imaginations! Always a great alternative when things won't quite go your way. Instead of actually planting fruit and vegetables we took on the task of illustrating where some of the fruit and vegetables we've learnt in class would grow if we had the means to grow them.

Now some students took this activity more seriously than others, some intentionally drawing potato trees and mice nibbling at the underground bananas. However it did prove to be a fun and productive activity where we could practise prepositions, our writing skills and fruit and vegetables vocabulary as well as test the students' critical thinking and logical reasoning.

We will be looking to expand our flower pot garden, with lots more surprises to come. Maybe even adding a caramel plant to the collection. Or even the proverbial money tree. What will you be growing in your garden this year?

Planting children - Luna's indoor garden party!

 Last year we had a lot of fun watching the tomatoes we planted with the pre-school children grow. And grow. AND grow! I kept having to move them, until I couldn't move them any lower and they still reached the ceiling! Bit disappointed at how few tomatoes we could enjoy - maybe too much energy spent growing tall?!

We have gone for a bit more variety (and mystery) this year. I have blatantly stolen this idea from Mayuka Habbick, and a presentation she made for Shinshu JALT last year. I pretended to be a silly teacher (?) and that I had lost the packets of the seeds. Children drew a picture of each different kind of seed, then drew a picture of what they thought it would become. Some really cool ideas, which I hope reality will not be a disappointment!

This was a lot of tactile fun, and gave children time to look carefully at the various seeds, taking in the shape, colour, texture, size.

More tactile, and messy, was the planting stage! Inevitably going to get soil etc spread around, so make sure you use a tarp or old newspapers to cover the table/carpet? (We are not blessed with a garden, but we do have a lot of nice warm windows)

We put in some stones at the bottom, them some nice 'snacks' (nutrients) for the plants to send roots down to. A bit of earth, then nestled our seeds around carefully and labelled the pot 1/2/3/4/5 as per our sketches. Then we put them to bed (covered them up with more soil) and finally added the magic ingredient - water. Oh, and a bit of hippy "grow, grow" chanting!

Now the anxious wait for something to happen!

Spring Planting weather topic

This is the perfect time of year to exploit the change of weather and do a little planting. I also find that this time of year lends itself well to study the weather topic as everyday seems to have a season in itself. Today, rain, last week wind and sun, and snow still fresh in our memories.

My younger students have been making these delightful little planters showing the change of seasons. Also a good oportunity to talk about the natural environment, which we did before hand whilst pouring over some pictures of the outdoors. Excitement is mounting as we look forward to all of the fun things we can do outside!

Well, that is if it stops raining that is!

Tana