West End Back @theGarden

On Monday another group from West End visited us at the garden. This week there were nine kids ready to learn not only about how to garden but also about where their food comes from.

We started with a scavenger hunt. We split up into three teams, each starting with a clue. My team and I started with the something that starts out green but becomes red, yellow or orange; tomatoes! Then we moved on to peppers, squash, corn, mint and kale. Kale turned out to be the most difficult vegetable to uncover. What was this extremely nutritious leafy vegetable? KALE, KALE, KALE!

Next we started filling out our garden journals.

These journals allow the kids to monitor their favorite plants over the next three weeks. We measured the temperature, described the weather, measured the length of the plant and drew pictures of their plant specimen.

The overall favorite seemed to be strawberries.

Now it was time for flower pressing. The kids hunted for their three favorite flowers from the wildflower bed. We laid them out on a piece of paper and then slid them into a book. In a few weeks we will be able to use our pressed flowers for making crafts such as bookmarks!

Next we moved on to gardening activities. I talked to the kids about bolting, and together we helped prune so of the herbs and greens of their flowers.

When we were picking the flowers off of the mustard greens, we gathered many of the yellow flowers to bring home to their parents.

The kids were also interested in trying the greens. Together we chewed small pieces of the greens. Simultaneously our faces looked expressed the shock of the spicy endnote of the green. I am not too sure that it was everyone’s favorite…