Monday with the Kindies and grade 1 classes, it was pouring rain, so they played for a few minutes outside then came into the cozy greenhouse to help chop, season and fry up pink, blue, and yellow potatoes. Our multi-coloured potato "popsicle" kebabs were really good!
We sang songs like "Inch by Inch, Row by Row" and "Making a Purple Stew" and "Robin in the Rain", and read "What to Do with What You Grew" with both classes while the rain tapped hard on the greenhouse roof and our potatoes sizzled.
Tuesday, the grades 1-2 and 2 classes picked the last of the pumpkins, more popcorn, and fried up potatoes outside - YUM-ME. Sarah Jutzi read the book "Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt". They always love garden play time, too, discovering creatures, tasty leaves, and loving our make-shift dirt-mover slide down the haybale terraces.
For Janisse's class, Dan Jason from Salt Spring Seeds arrived with a giant tub of beautifully diverse dried beans. They were jewel-like and many patterned, some green emeralds, others tigers-eye, with names like Orca and Gold Marie and Montezuma Red. [We plan to eat them with the classes as soups in crock-pots for lunches. I need to make a soup kit! Maybe this coming Thursday?] Dan talked about seed abundance and beauty, diversity and read a book to the class while they played with beans.
A Tuesday afterschool work-party had been planned for parents, but it was so sunny and beautiful that we all begged off and planned for the following week. Sarah stayed and helped clean-up from classes and I'm so excited that she'll be helping to teach the classes at SSE this year! Here's a current panorama of the Hillside Garden:
Wednesday with Heidi's grades 3-4 class, we moved all the pumpkins to the front storage room, then made a planetary model with relative distances in our solar system across the field using the coolest squashes. This class is super physical and works well as a team, so they raked, shoveled and loaded up the rotting pile of old weeds on the blacktop from the front food garden.
With Katharine's class, they harvested the bulk of the German butterball potatoes (thanks to Galiano's Cable Bay Farm), chopped and fried them up, picked more popcorn to start drying, and had seconds and thirds until all the potatoes were gone.
Thursday was the first National Day for Truth & Reconciliation, so there was no school, so no grades 5-6 classes in the garden.