Soil

After rocks and minerals, the class digs into soil. The Soils 4 Kids website offers information, resources, and interactive games for kids to explore everything they ever wanted to know about soil. Click here to visit the site, or click the images below to learn about soil through game play.

Prepping Our Veggie Bed

While clearing and tilling our vegetable bed, John discovers the first segmented resident.

 

Sa'riyah finds another.

Gakadein's newfound friend navigates gloved fingers.

Niko and Madison dig deep to remove this one.

 

Making Paper Pots

Stacy Smith (our neighborhood environmental education advocate extraordinaire) joins the class again for a lesson on soil, seed germination and how to make paper pots.

The lesson begins with a variety of seeds to examine. Sa'riyah and Ben admire dandelion wisps.

 

Batiste and Trinity poke around the nooks and crannies of a longleaf pine cone while Stacy explains the relationship between the longleaf pine tree and fire. The extreme heat of annual fires in the Coastal Plain releases seeds from cones. Without fire, there wouldn't be any new longleaf pine trees.

Next, Stacy demonstrates how to make paper pots out of old Flagpole Magazines.

Everyone chooses seeds to plant in their pots, including watermelon, okra, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers (yum).

In addition to paper pots, Stacy teaches us how to chit potatoes. Chitting potatoes simply means leaving them out in a warm/sunny spot. This jump starts the sprouting process. The photo below shows curious alien sprouts after two months. The purple organic spuds from Daily Co-op are sprouting the most.

Now they're ready for planting!