Learning About Plants With Botanist Bert & the Briarcliff Garden

This week the boys and girls were introduced to Botanist Bert and the study of botany.  We started our day by brainstorming what we already knew about plants and what we wondered about them.  We were very excited and fortunate to have Mrs. Garrett and Mrs. Poole, Briarcliff's Community Garden mentors, give us a tour of our school garden.   They answered many of our questions, shared their knowledge and expertise with us and inspired a whole new round of questions.  

Today, we learned:

• Briarcliff does three plantings a year; our spring planting in late March, our summer planting in June and our fall planting in mid to late August.
• Our garden currently has several herbs growing as well as lettuce, radishes, swiss chard, kale, sweet potatoes, celery, carrots, bush beans and beats.
• In some vegetables, we eat the root, some the stem, and some the leaves.
• Some vegetables grow slowly all summer, while lettuce and radishes grow pretty quickly in the spring.
• Some of the garden plants have really long, leafy vines that take over the garden bed.
• Briarcliff's community garden is organic.  That means they use no chemicals like fertilizers or pesticides on it.

Mrs. Garrett and Mrs. Poole also asked for our help.  They need garden markers to show everyone what each plant is that is growing in our beds.  Our K/1st grade SAGE students are creating new plant stakes to mark the fall garden.  We are glad we are able to help with the garden.

In the afternoon, the students worked on "Making an Organized List" in the Problem Solver and then continued their work in TOPS Math.  They also worked on their individual Exploratory tasks.

We hope to see you at our fall Open House Tuesday, October 2nd from 6:00-7:00 in our classroom.