Growing, and learning

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This article was published 08/06/2017 (3253 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Students at Westview School (600 Hoka St.) are getting their hands dirty learning about the life cycle of plants, and loving every minute of it.

On June 8, two volunteers from Home Depot built two raised cedar garden beds for the school, after resource teacher Anna Unrau secured a $500 grant from the Nutrients for Life Foundation to get the project off the ground.

“The students are all super excited about the idea that they’ll be a part of planting,” Unrau said as the garden boxes were being assembled. “I think they’re excited they can come out and pick food, excited about the harvest in the fall.”

The idea for the garden came out of a discussion with the school’s environment club.

“We talked about composting,” Unrau said. “It was natural fit to bring in some gardens.”

Early years classrooms at Westview have been learning various aspects of the life cycle. With the addition of the garden, teachers can take their classroom lessons outside.

“We brainstormed about flowers,” said Brooklyn Grobowsky, a Grade 2 student in Sabrina Smaczylo’s Grade 2 class. We learned there are lots of flowers in the world.

“We went on the computers to see what flowers would attract some bugs and animals,” said Amged Abaker, another Grade 2 student.

“We picked dahlias and milkweed,” said Claire Burton, Grade 2.

“We picked dahlias because my name is Daelia,” added Daelia Kauk, yet another of Smaczylo’s Grade 2 students.

In Maureen Hepples’ Grade 3 class, students are taking part in NASA’s Tomatosphere project, which aims to establish whether seeds are affected by being in space in order to determine whether it would be possible to colonize Mars.

“They planted tomatoes from seeds,” Hepples explained. “One package was from International Space Station, the other was regular, from Earth. ”

Students tracked the germination period of the two sample groups, marking progress on charts and submitting their information to the NASA. Once the plants were growing, they transplanted them to larger planters, and have been tracking their growth as well.

“They’re using math and science to track the progress,” Hepples added.

Along with tomatoes, the Grade 3 students in Hepples’ class also grew corn, milkweed, dahlias, peas, and beans, which will be added to the garden.

“They’ve been planting, transplanting, they’ve done everything,” Hepples said.

Students will tend to the garden, which Unrau hopes will become a kind of outdoor classroom. And when school ends for the summer at the end of the month, Westview’s daycare will pick up the slack.

“You see a lot of gardens in front of schools fail because nobody is there to tend to them in the summer,” Unrau said. “But the daycare will tend to them all summer. Hopefully in the fall we can harvest some of the food.”

According to Unrau, the whole school is a buzz about the garden, and are thankful for the support they’ve received from the community.

“People are coming together in the interest of the garden,” she said. “Not only have Home Depot and Nutrients for Life helped, but our staff in the building are chipping in with stuff from their own gardens, like, ‘I’ve got Brown Eyed Susans, I’ve got Shasta daisies’!”

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