September 2017
Our First Grade class releasing classroom-raised Monarch butterflies.
Our School Garden is a place of wonder and discovery for our young students...
...and a place of nuturing and sweet nectar for our newly emerged butterflies
and other visiting pollinators.
June 2016
Well boy, did our garden grow this Spring!
We marveled at how tall our lettuce grew from 3 inch babies to plants as tall as our waists, at how plentiful our First Grade cauliflower and Kindergarten peas proved to be, and how big and tasty our celery plants became. We were hoping to see our raspberries mature enough to taste before school ended, but no luck there! As we picked our tasty vegetables and ate them in our classroom, we learned that raw veggies often taste better than cooked. A few students shared, "I didn't like the taste of cauliflower when Mom cooked it at home, but I like the taste of it raw today from our garden." That's music to a School Garden Teacher's ears!
Some of the most interesting plants to watch growing this season have been the brussel sprouts forming and lettuce stalks developing. It's so fascinating to see first hand how veggies become formed and shaped on their plants.
We've learned that watching food grow makes it even more delicious to taste.
Our last week of school in our garden. Look at our deeelicious day's picking!
For some of us, there's no place else we'd rather be...nurturing, tending and soaking up all the sunshine and goodness
our garden and gardening there has to offer.
Bon apetit...and happy gardening to all you backyard gardeners at home this summer!
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Hooray...Spring has Sprung!
We were excited to plant in our School Garden for the first time this season. Spring provided our class a warm, sunny afternoon today to get our 3 kinds of lettuce planted. We shared the time with our planting buddies in Mrs. Lucia's Kindergarten class. They filled a raised bed with lots of celery plants. We've never seen celery grow before...should be interesting. Also being planted this week is kale, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrot seeds to germinate. Now, a little water added on Thursday before we leave for Spring Break and we'll have plant growth to measure when we return. What better place to learn to measure in inches, centimeters and feet than in our School Garden!
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Monday, November 9, 2015
Mmm, Mmm Good!
Collard greens were planted in our school garden this fall. When they were ready for harvesting, Ms. Dangerfield' brought them back to school cooked with just the right amount of seasoning. Our class and Ms. Dangerfield's class got together this morning for a healthy class snack of collards and corn bread. Most of the students had never tasted collard greens before, but happily cleaned their plates saying, "DELICIOUS!" and "Can I have more?" We'll have to plant more next year!
Thank you Ms. Dangerfield and Mrs. Hickman for making a garden foods memory with us!
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Thursday, October 15, 2015
Fall Harvesting!
Look what we harvested this afternoon from our School Garden. What fun we had working with our school office Secretary, Sharon Chase, and our "little gardeners" to gather such a beautiful array of healthy garden goodies - kale, lettuces (red sails & boston), eggplant, green peppers and carrots - yum! The Swallowtails enjoyed our carrots--now it's our turn.
Miss Sharon loves our school garden too!
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Friday, October 2, 2015...
Raising and Releasing Our First Black Swallowtail Butterfly!
We took caterpillars into our classroom that we happily discovered were living on the parsely and carrot tops growing in our School Garden. As we watched the caterpillars munch away growing long and plump our excitement to see the chrysalis and then adult butterfly develop grew and grew. Finally, the beautiful Swallowtail emerged from its brown, stick-colored cocoon. Before the day was over, we had the joy of releasing it to freedom once again back into our School Garden where it could feast on nectar from our flowering garden plants. Isn't our Swallowtail a beauty to behold?
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Tuesday, September 15, 2015....
First Grade Learns About Life Cyles in our School Garden and Classrooms
We had a great experience when all of D wing classes at Slaybaugh Primary got together to release 9 Monarchs this morning outside in our School Garden.. To date (September 28) we have raised and released 12 more that will begin their migration journey to Mexico this fall.
Then we were amazed as we explored the parsely and carrot greens in the garden to find scads of various sizes of Black Swallowtail caterpillars happily munching away on the green leaves. Having already watched Monarch caterpillars grow, we were able to compare the colors and shapes of both.
Did you know it takes 10 - 14 days for a Monarch chrysalis to develop into an adult butterfly? We know because we watched it happen in our classroom! How exciting it is to see a new butterfly emerge and in just a few hours be ready to fly!
Can you see the Monarch flying away high in the sky over the building roof?
(Click the link below to see more release pictures.)
Our First Monarch Release 2015 pics for website.pdf
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And so it began...
On September 27, 2014, with the help of a wonderful group of dedicted people and lots of donated and repurposed materials, our Slaybaugh Primary School Garden & Outdoor Classroom was created. Be sure to view the Catawba video of this amazing event by clicking on the picture below.
Bushels of thanks go to husbands, Mike Ebert for building and donating the raised beds and Wayne Lucia (Keri Lucia - Kindergarten) for making sure the beds were well-secured and our garden is continually mulched. Your generous donations of time, talents, materials and support and have made all the difference! Thank you to Mr. John Jones (Alder Ave. Middle School), Mr. Colin McClain (Miller School) and the extraordinary Catawba Project folks. Without your labor and dedication our garden would not exist!
School Garden - Blog 2 - 2014-2015.docx
Click the picture below to see how a dream came true
and a garden was born!
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Our partners helping to cultivate a generation of environmental stewards.