Kitah Bet, How Does Your Garden Grow?

It starts with an idea, a seed, and with enough time, love, and attention, our plants and flowers grow! Earlier on this year we had the idea to invite a professional gardener into our class to talk about planting seeds and nurturing them into plants. We put the seeds into newly decorated pots that we did with parents and special guests during our Guy's Day celebration with the hopes of sending them off to people who could use some cheering up.  Sadly, one of our plants caught a disease and it quickly killed off our tiny, fragile plants. 

Here are a few pictures of that process so you can see how beautiful the pots were and how hard everyone worked. 

With hopes of warm weather coming soon, we put off planting inside our classroom. So, now that we are into warm(ish) weather, we are ready to give it another go.  With the help and idea of a very ambitious parent, we decided to grow cucumbers!  Not only are we growing cucumbers, we intend to turn them into pickles this summer when they are fully grown.  How fun!

We explained to the class that spring is here and it's the perfect time to plant some veggies, herbs and flowers outside where they will get all of the elements needed to help them grow. We talked about how it is our responsibility to find the right space and prepare it for planting, to plant the plants, then to take care of them to help them grow into big cucumbers so we can eat and pickle them. 

So, we set out to find the perfect, sunny spot. 

Then we moved the wood chips out.  We didn't just move the wood chips to any old place, we put them where they were needed right under the tire swing.  Bucket after bucket got filled and carried from one place to another.  The children we walking tall and proud as they purposefully moved from one place to the other.

We then looked at the ground we cleared. Was the dirt soft and ready to receive the plant so the roots could grows strong or was it hard, making it difficult to grow?  It was too hard! So we dug and dug and dug some more and mixed our dirt with nutrient rich soil to help our new plants.

The most exciting part: We found worms! Not everyone was impressed...

We covered the roots with our newly mixed soil, packed it in tight and added the last element: water!

We hope our plants like their new home!  We check on them daily to make sure they have enough water, sunlight and love!

A big thanks to Suzanne for the idea and the plants and to Batya for helping us with the planting process.  We have THE BEST school family.