Monday 24 September 2012

Is that really how it grows?

After waking at 4am with the sound of the rain on my roof tiles, I donned my thermals ready for an aftenoon filled with very soggy children and multiple reminders on the importance of keeping wellington boots outside of the classroom. Luckily, following a morning of dropping Alice and the White Rabbit from the ceiling and pondering the potential of the Cheshire Cat's gravity defying abilities, (all in the name of our forces investigation,) the sky appeared to run out of water - phew!

The children were really excited to read their blog live for the first time and the authors, although proud, could see ways to improve it. Saying that, they did well considering they only had 5 minutes to type it before the excitement of an Olympian in class! They'll be even more impressed when they see the map which shows who's been reading - they've got 4 countries coloured in already (I've also got the atlases on stand-by in anticipation of them wanting to find out which ones!)

It was the final group's first chance to garden today, and most seemed keen to crack on. The fact that a younger class* had made fantastic progress on the weeding last Wednesday meant they had something to aim for.

As the girls were pulling up the "anti-weed" carpet, which had become a small ecosystem; the boys in the group came across some more evidence of previous veg. patch activity. Nestling amongst the thistles were six yellowing maize plants - all with fruit. The excitement of some of the group to see the stucture of the plants was fascinating, calling other groups over to share what they'd learnt. I often forget that, although these children are from rural backgrounds, they are of the generation where food comes pre-packaged from the supermarket and requires no more thought. I hope that soon, I'll be able to share with them the importance of growing, not just on a local scale but for their understanding of the wider world and the communities the Pinapple Project, Grower's Nation's sister project, is hoping to help.

*You should hear from Year 4 very soon - expect to hear things described as "epic!" fairly frequently!

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