Garden Corner
2019-2020
We are excited to kick off a new school year of exploring our Neighborhood House Gardens!
September 2019
We are excited to kick off a new school year of exploring our Neighborhood House Gardens! All classes had a chance to sample some garden produce. This month’s garden literature included The Carrot Seed by Ruth Kraus and The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and Sunflower House by Eve Bunting. All classes reviewed garden safety, explored the garden and began exploring sunflowers. We saw what was left of the sunflower house that was planted in the spring by some of our current 3s. Groups of children helped pull withering and very tall sunflower plants out of the ground. Some plants were carried to our compost pile and some to the playground for the entire school to explore. We looked at the flowers, seeds, stems, leaves and roots up close, and helped to collect seeds to plant a new sunflower house in the spring.
October 2019
It’s been a busy month at Neighborhood House! The Millburn Farmers’ Market again welcomed our 4s and our wonderful parent chaperones for a scavenger hunt of fruits, vegetables and other food sold there. Our market visit allowed us to continue our study of how our food ends up on our plates. There were many colors and shapes of produce to identify and compare, and everyone had fun hunting for items in the scavenger hunt. The vendors told us about the items they had for sale. Thanks to Downtown Millburn, we were gifted with delicious apples from Ott’s Farm to share back at school. We enjoyed readings of A Day at the Farmer’s Market by Luke Kelly and We’re Going to the Farmers’ Market by Stefan Page. Our 3s enjoyed talking about their experiences of attending farmers’ markets and some children created their own farmer’s market in the dramatic play area.
We of course spent time exploring pumpkins as Halloween approached! Last spring and summer, we watched our pumpkin vines grow from the seeds we had harvested the previous fall. Unfortunately, our vines withered before they could produce any pumpkins. We were able to explore a very long withering vine from my home garden and studied its stem, leaves and flowers and the attached white pumpkin. We cut an orange pumpkin for a hands-on investigation of the flesh, seeds and pulp inside. We were sure to set aside 6 pumpkin seeds from each pumpkin to plant in the spring just as the character Jaime did in Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington. Once our exploration was complete, we carved jack o lanterns and displayed them on the school’s porch.
November 2019
This month all classes spent some time with important underground gardeners, our friends the worms! Worms from our garden visited the children. Willing participants allowed the worms to move on their hands while others studied them from a comfortable distance. Thanks to the book Yucky Worms by Vivian French, we learned how worms transform our garden debris into castings (a.k.a. worm poop!) that help our garden grow.
Even though the cold days of winter are looming, we aren’t quite done with planting in the garden. Garlic cloves and daffodil bulbs have made their way into the garden and will grow underground throughout the winter months. We all used our senses of sight, touch and smell to explore amaryllis, hyacinth, and garlic bulbs and onions and compared their sizes, shapes and colors. All classes are watching garlic, amaryllis and hyacinth grow in cups in the classrooms. We look forward to seeing colorful blooms in the coming months.
Michele Sofo, The Garden Enrichment Teacher
We are excited to kick off a new school year of exploring our Neighborhood House Gardens!
September 2019
We are excited to kick off a new school year of exploring our Neighborhood House Gardens! All classes had a chance to sample some garden produce. This month’s garden literature included The Carrot Seed by Ruth Kraus and The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and Sunflower House by Eve Bunting. All classes reviewed garden safety, explored the garden and began exploring sunflowers. We saw what was left of the sunflower house that was planted in the spring by some of our current 3s. Groups of children helped pull withering and very tall sunflower plants out of the ground. Some plants were carried to our compost pile and some to the playground for the entire school to explore. We looked at the flowers, seeds, stems, leaves and roots up close, and helped to collect seeds to plant a new sunflower house in the spring.
October 2019
It’s been a busy month at Neighborhood House! The Millburn Farmers’ Market again welcomed our 4s and our wonderful parent chaperones for a scavenger hunt of fruits, vegetables and other food sold there. Our market visit allowed us to continue our study of how our food ends up on our plates. There were many colors and shapes of produce to identify and compare, and everyone had fun hunting for items in the scavenger hunt. The vendors told us about the items they had for sale. Thanks to Downtown Millburn, we were gifted with delicious apples from Ott’s Farm to share back at school. We enjoyed readings of A Day at the Farmer’s Market by Luke Kelly and We’re Going to the Farmers’ Market by Stefan Page. Our 3s enjoyed talking about their experiences of attending farmers’ markets and some children created their own farmer’s market in the dramatic play area.
We of course spent time exploring pumpkins as Halloween approached! Last spring and summer, we watched our pumpkin vines grow from the seeds we had harvested the previous fall. Unfortunately, our vines withered before they could produce any pumpkins. We were able to explore a very long withering vine from my home garden and studied its stem, leaves and flowers and the attached white pumpkin. We cut an orange pumpkin for a hands-on investigation of the flesh, seeds and pulp inside. We were sure to set aside 6 pumpkin seeds from each pumpkin to plant in the spring just as the character Jaime did in Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington. Once our exploration was complete, we carved jack o lanterns and displayed them on the school’s porch.
November 2019
This month all classes spent some time with important underground gardeners, our friends the worms! Worms from our garden visited the children. Willing participants allowed the worms to move on their hands while others studied them from a comfortable distance. Thanks to the book Yucky Worms by Vivian French, we learned how worms transform our garden debris into castings (a.k.a. worm poop!) that help our garden grow.
Even though the cold days of winter are looming, we aren’t quite done with planting in the garden. Garlic cloves and daffodil bulbs have made their way into the garden and will grow underground throughout the winter months. We all used our senses of sight, touch and smell to explore amaryllis, hyacinth, and garlic bulbs and onions and compared their sizes, shapes and colors. All classes are watching garlic, amaryllis and hyacinth grow in cups in the classrooms. We look forward to seeing colorful blooms in the coming months.
Michele Sofo, The Garden Enrichment Teacher
