Planting season - Luna's indoor market garden launched again

For reasons which will become clear in the fullness of time, I only wanted to plant short things this year, in our gardening workshop. Things we can carry without having to cut down a supporting lattice of canes, netting etc. Last year's tomatoes were amazingly tall, productive and resilient - one still giving us fruit until Jim had to chop it down to make space for water-damaged materials from our sodden storeroom last week.

A very willing bunch of short people came along this afternoon to get their hands dirty - but first we needed to d
ocument the seeds (get our hands on them and investigate size, shape, colour etc. We drew pictures of them and had a guess at what they might grow into. Some very interesting ideas such as 'cream', 'ants', 'daikon' & mushrooms...and I can't tell you what they actually were because the packets got mixed up in the rush to prepare this morning! Some seeds were big & round, others so tiny we couldn't pick them up; some long & thin, or prickly-shaped, or like pepper-corns.

 Damian is playing in Tokyo this weekend, so we hijacked his classroom and filled 9 planters with a different set of seeds each - we recycled the soil although Jim did prep with nutrients, water, and a good stir beforehand. Some we drilled holes for, others we sprinkled in a line. In one, we found a bulb which had just started making roots/shoots & quickly re-planted as an extra surprise - was it an avocado maybe, or a tulip bulb? Let's hope we didn't disturb it too much!

The next few weeks will be an exciting wait for shoots to appear - but might be a longer wait than usual as our winter is very cold & snowy this year. Watch this space!

Thank you mums & dads for lending a hand; great to see Susumu back from his London adventures. Thank you Eleanor for big sister job, and to Masa, Sakura, Kai, Minii for your green fingers :)

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

Planting season

This little mission a little overdue, but better late than never!

Glorious sunny morning for a little stroll down to Watahan, grab some seeds & get our hands dirty. We chose some nice colourful flowers, and some easy to maintain vegetables. Hopefully they won't all bloom or blossom or ripen at the same time!

The girls helped dig holes, plop seeds in, cover and add water; some of the water even went on the seeds and not on socks! We were careful to label our  pots this time, and will remember to water everything regularly.

We also saw Mr & Mrs Swallow building a nest under our school, so we will have to keep an eye on them, and hope the landlord doesn't break the nests again. Mr & Mrs Pigeon have laid four shiny white eggs on the other balcony, which should hatch soon.

It's Spring!

Spring is a time for planting flowers, and that's exactly what this group of beginners did. This is learning English the holistic way, with a good dose of fun thrown in too.

It's very important that our children enjoy their classes as we want then to associate learning English with positive experiences.

Well, we learnt a bit about nature, practiced our motor skills and communicated co-operatively in order to complete the task in English! Not bad for a bunch of beginners!

We even got a bit messy in the process.

Wow! Look at those beautiful pots!