Growing to Learn

At the beginning of September the sun began shining for us and we started thinking about Spring and how things grow.

We went on a walk to explore our school garden area and were a bit disappointed with what we found. It had great potential but had been neglected for a long time and nothing much was growing!

On closer inspection we found a lavender bush that smelled lovely. Near that was a little lemon tree and a few strawberry plants growing in the garden next to it. We discovered old pots, compost bins and a trellis that looked good for growing things on. Kirsty and Kayleigh even found a little area that would make a great hut or secret garden!

The whole junior hub went to view our school orchard next. We found feijoa trees, nectarine trees, apple trees and pear trees. There was also lots different kinds of currants growing. We can't wait until they all grow big enough to start fruiting!

We all put our thinking hats on to imagine how we would love our garden area to look.

We had such amazing ideas when we all brainstormed together!

We loved talking about the vegetables that we like to eat and some of our favourite flowers that we love to see and smell. We thought about our five senses and how we could create a garden that we could explore with all of our senses.

We loved the idea of having butterflies and birds in our garden and thought about ways that we could encourage them to visit us. We created amazing dream garden plans to record all of our ideas. Here are a few of our garden dreams:

On the 15th of September we made the most of long play time! We began to tackle the weeding and cleared a great little area in the middle of the garden.

In amongst the weeds we found some old tree stumps and thought of some fun ideas that we could turn them into....

On 19 September we tackled some more weeding and began to put a few of our ideas into action. First up was the beginning of our fairy garden. We made a good start and plan to add some more aspects over the next few weeks. Levi had some wonderfully creative ideas for our fairy garden. It's going to look amazing!

There were so many weeds - we are going to be very busy!

Next we began to plant our sunflower seeds along the fence line. The bell went before we could finish so we gave them a quick water, packed up and headed back to class. Hopefully we will get the rest in later this week. The tamariki are loving being out in the garden and it was so lovely listening to them sharing their ideas and knowledge as they worked alongside each other.