Today we cut down the willows for our pea tepee, donated the seeds to Good Will and went dumpster diving for cardboard! Next week we will continue the scavenger hunt for our garden by looking for used pallets! We are going to make a fence for our garden out of pallets! We have watched some videos about it and it looks like the kids can help build it! We are still on the hunt for our arbor trellis.
0 Comments
Prairie Green students went to Preucil and measured their garden space and talked with them about what they wanted to plant. The kids decided on tomatoes, lettuce and carrots. On Thursday, we used graph paper to plan out their garden and on Friday sent seeds for them to start indoors. We used the seeds that Pleasant Valley donated to us.
I also met with the kids to start planning our garden. Jack, BJ and I sat down and started to calculate when seeds needed to be started in order to get in the ground in the time needed. We started our first set of seeds: Black-eyed susan, butternut squash, basil and broccoli. Tuesdays are the new day to be in town. The kids were introduced to bowling today and had a fantastic time cheering each other on. I was able to watch them play and I could not believe how supportive they were of each other! Check out the pictures and video below. Listen closely in the video to catch the encouraging words shared between the kids! Genie took us on a tour of the New Pioneer Co-op in Coralville. She told us how the store started as just a few individuals who wanted the freshest food grown without any added chemicals. We tasted some local vegetables (seen in the picture below) and we learned about a farm in Grinnell that had the BEST carrots! Genie also told us about Fair Trade: what it means for us and how to identify other items in the store. In asking the kids what was something they took away from the discussion, BJ says, "I learned what was in food coloring (tar) and now I don't eat anything with it in it! Also, our banana pickers get paid more than other banana pickers." Lucy says "I learned that the Co-op is the only store (in Iowa) that composts." Jack says, "I learned that tuna is threatened but that the customers want it so the Co-op still sells it. I also found out that recyclable spoons are much more expensive than plastic spoons. The Co-op is now using them!"
After a few months of Spanish, we were ready to try out our new language in public! We decided to go to lunch at El Cactus in Coralville where we would order in Spanish! Thursdays have been our day we start off downtown. We meet at the Iowa City Public Library and are able to rent a room before the library opens. The past two weeks we have started with some Yoga. Our instructor is Erica Reschly. She brings mats for us and we organize them into a circle. It looks like a colorful sun. We take our shoes off and start with an excercise to get our heart rates up. Today we played "Cat, Cat, Cow"...a yoga version of "Duck, Duck, Goose". If you got tagged you had to go into the center and hold a yoga pose as the game continued. Paula had to hold tree pose today beause Lucy taged her. We then concentrate on our breathing by doing some Lion breaths. That is a fun one that Jorge suggested from when he did Yoga outside of school. Some of the poses we are familiar with are sun salutation, airplane, tree pose and dolphin pose. At the end we all stretch together and we could ALL benefit from daily stretching and reminders to sit up straight. Hopefully with our weekly yoga, we will see an improvement in our flexibility. On Thursdays we have been meeting downtown at the Iowa City Library. Today, Sara Steele read big books with the tater tots while the bigs played bananagrams word game. Marta, our Spanish teacher, discussed Spanish speaking countries using an Atlas. She also introduced a website http://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/mimundo/default.htm. After, we checked out books and headed out to school. We celebrated Claire's birthday (Aug. 8th) by making a cake. Then Claire left the room and the rest of us decorated for her party. The look on her face was priceless! (check out video below) The students decided to compliment the cake with chocolate mint milkshakes made with the mint from our garden. They got to decide how much ice cream, milk and mint to add to their own creations. |
Archives
August 2017
Categories
All
|