may 2024
During our morning snack we talked about planting seeds and gardening. A topic that was sparked yesterday when the children were investigating the soil and gardening tools in our room. “We should plant something” says J “we could plant magic seeds.” says A. “Or sunflowers.” says J. Some of the children said that they had planted seeds at home and that they are growing different things. “I have flowers and cucumbers,” says W. “I have strawberries in my basement,” says A. “I'm growing hotdogs,” says H. “Im growing herbs and pumpkins” says J. “Some peas,” says M. “My family grows some peas and cucumbers, and raspberries too.” says B. “I have rhubarb.” says W. “I'm growing things in the backyard. Flowers and carrots.” says H. “Mom got new plants. White ones and red ones.” says L. This afternoon we added soil and seeds to an empty fish tank to create a terrarium where the children could plant seeds and watch them grow. They planted grass seed and sunflower seeds and over the next couple days we will see what happens. A few days passed and I asked the children what they saw in the terrarium or if it looked the same or different than it did last week. “I see some dirt,'' says B. “I see grass,” says J. “I see some grass seed,” says H. The children also noticed something beneath the soil. “It's sprouts,” says J, “I know what that is! It's called kuishki.” says A. When translated, kuishki means stem. “It attaches to the grass,” says S. “The part that's in the ground is eating the dirt. The grass grows bigger.” S adds. The children have a lot of knowledge on what is happening in the terrarium and are looking forward to watching it grow. The next morning the children were taking a closer look at our terrarium when they noticed that it looked a little different than yesterday. “It looks different,” says L. “It's bigger,” B says. “Is that a green worm?” W asks. “That's a sunflower,” S replies. The children had noticed that the grass had grown a little longer and that some of the sunflower seeds had started to sprout. S then said “bugs will get in there and the flowers will grow nothing.” J responded saying “they would like drill a hole in them and it will be dead.'' S and J both agree that if bugs get into our terrarium the grass and sunflowers would die. One of the children created a diagram of what he saw growing inside the terrarium. He used brown to represent the dirt/soil, green lines to represent the grass, and green lines with a circle on the top to represent the sunflowers sprouting. The children have been enjoying engaging in conversation about the changes happening in the terrarium. We are looking forward to seeing what other observations the children will make and the conversations this will spark.
Alesha Spirka RECE, Rachelle Minthorn RECE RT