al-mofhariz

You may have noticed that I am very proud of our outdoor classroom space....As I have stated a million times, it is all due to our wonderful local Master Gardeners .  If any of you are considering taking this project on, I highly recommend you contact them through your local extension centers.  If you click on the link above, there is a data base telling you where they are located in your state.  Master Gardeners have to do community service as part of the program.  They are usually looking for volunteer hours and would love to help out.  My Master Gardener secured the grant through Kohl's to provide money for the materials, organized the whole building process, waters the garden all through the year and into the summer when we are gone and even started an after school Garden Club for the kids.  So check into this resource if you are seriously considering a garden at your school. SherriA asked me how we put a whiteboard outside in our garden.  She was...

Well, it's not really my new garden...but I did convince the Master Gardeners to build our school another garden bed by our Fourth and Fifth Grade classroom.  Why? Well I got to thinking...we have a beautiful garden out by our K-1-2 wing. My class uses it all the time as I have shown in past blogs.  My students love it - we have four beds maintained by a wonderful Master Gardener (Susan Gingrich) and her two clubs - Garden Club and Jr. Master Gardeners.    Our art teacher has made a beautiful mural made with recycled bottle tops and a former student and Eagle Scout made us picnic tables and an outdoor whiteboard for instruction. Yes, I know...we are spoiled.   However, I kept thinking .... we need something more. About that time, I was told we had $300 to spend as part of a grant that was awarded to us for instructional purposes for animal/plant studies.  I thought...why not put one out by the other side of the school for our kids to work on during re...

I have to take some time to share with you the latest project at my school.  My art teacher, the fabulous Mrs. Mamon, had students collect and sort bottle caps over the past year as part of a school wide recycling campaign.  I never knew how many colors of bottle caps there were! Then this fall as part of an enrichment day, she had students in 2nd and 3rd grade help glue on the bottle caps in a bottle cap mural (which were later screwed in with a drill by various volunteers).   The effect was much like an impressionist painting.  From close up, all you can see are dots....but step back a little further.... and you see a flower.... a caterpillar...a leaf...a bee...a butterfly... and finally a garden...

Here in Virginia our studnets need to know how to measure a picture to the nearest inch, 1/2 inch, 1/4 inch and 1/8 of an inch.  How do we teach it? Let me show you.... First we started by passing out inch rulers and drawing three inch lines.  Then we divided one line in half, one line in fourths and one line in eigths.  Then we colored each section to show size. It looked like this in their science notebooks. Part two - we went outside to our school garden in search of objects that were less than one inch.  The students had so much fun measuring objects in nature and recording them in their science notebooks. They found a ladybug that was about 1/8 of an inch. Here is a sample of the notebook entries from one child.... I don't know if you can read it, but it says A growing white flower (1/8 of an inch). A pebble (1/4) of an inch. The inside of a yellow flower (the stigma) 1/4 of an inch Ant = Half an inch