Pennies for Peace! Stone Soup.

YAY! We did it! We managed to raise $169.00 all in the name of Pennies for Peace. What an enlightening journey we have gone through! Much like Ollie was sharing with his parents when we initially began the project, maybe, one day our students might make a trip to see the schools that we have helped build. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Parents, friends and above all students of SK, thank you for taking this project so seriously and opening your hearts, and your piggy banks! THANK YOU:)

On Friday, our class went to TCF Bank to exchange the pennies that we had collected since April. Oh, what joy the students had seeing the pennies go down the express exchange teller. The numbers went

up and eventually the machine was overloaded and help was called for. We got to see the inside of the machine; what a treat it was for the children. The biggest highlight for me was to see the children all screaming when they got to see the 100 dollar bill, "Hey, it is Ben Franklin," they screamed. Then they hugged each other and said "Yay, a group hug!" Well, Baskins Robbins was next door, and I wanted to give them a special treat. You can only imagine what followed after...enjoy some of these pictures.

Whoops! Nearly forgot, we happened to have a pretty exciting day even before the trip to the bank... we had  a feast of Stone Soup ( prepared by our class)and bread baked by Susans' class.The whole school joined us!  Please, excuse how randomly placed the pics are, I was just so overwhelmed with joy I had to share these a.s.a.p!!

 

The Secret Garden!

"I really enjoyd bing at the Garden. it was beuetafull. i think Joeina wort really hard on the garden. the roses were just like in my dream, and all the other flowres wher like my dreams too." writes Amelia, who is sitting peacefully and reflecting the serenity of the Secret Garden. The others are admiring the roses and sketching on their clip boards. They come back to school and make more drawings.

This morning we were able to visit and explore an English Secret Garden. Yes, Joanna's peaceful and exotic garden! My students and I were delighted to get a tour and learn about numerous plants names and examine their seeds. It was beautiful to see the students exploring the paths, looking at the lily pads and fishes and petting Eclipse (cat), listening to the tranquil flow of the water. The highlight was listening to Joanna narrate a story; How the Whale Became, by Ted Hughes. (Did you know the whale was originally a plant in a garden?!)

What an incredible journey we have covered, this past month, with plants and growing things.

Joanna, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts, for taking us to visit your Secret Garden.

This is a tour that will stay with us for a long long time I'm sure......

Eyes in the dark / Secret Garden/ County Farm Park / Live Redwood Burl/ Nature walk ....and much more

What has eyes, but cannot see?
The potato! The little bumps that grow on a potato's skin are called "eyes". An eye can grow into a new potato plant. A potato is a tuber. A tuber is a fat underground stem with little buds, that can grow into new plants.  Students are in a hurry to see them grow, dig out potatoes and make them into fries......hmmmmm, let us see what happens...

Do plants only grow from seeds?  We are experimenting to see whether they can grow from roots, seeds, leaves and stems.....

Thank you, Nick Giardino ( David's dad) for helping us make a raised bed. I asked my class what they would like to plant in our own little garden, they said, unanimously, a secret garden with pretty things in it, just like the Secret Garden! (We had read this book in the fall and they took me by surprise when they mentioned it. It is one of those books that stays with you, I guess.) So I asked, "What kind of pretty plants?" They said, something really beautiful to come back to, since school is almost over. I couldn't disagree. Each of my students asked to plant something entirely different.
We loaded our little wagon  and went to beautify our new found raised garden-bed and planted a rose bush, strawberry, pumpkin, tomato, sun-flower and coconut palm.

Students all came up with brilliant ideas as to what we could do with our plants in the fall.
1. Out of the pumpkin, make a jack o' lantern in the fall.
2. The children who come for summer camp could eat the strawberries.
3. The rose bush will keep on growing and they could enjoy looking at the roses.
4. Since the coconut palm is a tropical plant, it will not survive the winter so Amelia is going to re-pot it in the fall, take it home and care for it.
5. The sunflower seeds could be used to plant it next year or eat the seeds for snacks.

This morning we had a lovely surprise from a mom who had just come back from visiting The Muir Woods. The students were in awe to see the pictures of these gigantic trees. We are experimenting by growing ferns from a redwood burl. Thank you, Mrs. Godwin, for bringing us such a precious gift.

We went on a neighborhood nature walk looking for something exciting. The children were busy with their clip boards, trying to sketch an exotic plant that they spotted.

What an amazing month it has been exploring and learning so much about the greens in our lives; in and around our school and the Matthai Botanical Gardens!

Plants and growing things

This morning I read "Planting Wangari's Trees of Peace", by Jeanette Winter.  It is the story of Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green belt Movement.

After I was done reading, this is what my children said: "If we do not have trees, Earth will become one big desert." "We cannot go on cutting trees because we need nature to live." "Trees help us breathe better, trees provide food and animals live in trees." "We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon-dioxide, so we are helping each other."

"The Earth was naked. For me the mission was to try to cover it with green."- Wangari Maathai.

It was a glorious day in Spring, so we too were in a mission to explore the woods right on our back yard. I handed my students a clip board, paper, pencil and inch tape measure and off we went and transformed ourselves into Dendrologists.

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Since the Farming  theme in October, we have discussed living and growing things numerous times, and have done different experiments on seeds / plants, including math (multiplication with seeds, measuring the growth of a plant). Children nonetheless were excited to discover the woods in a totally new light. Maybe it was because of the clip boards and the new name that they had just learned - dendrologist. It was absolutely phenomenal to see our kids becoming silviculturists! They were jotting down, asking questions about the different species of plants that they saw and discovering the age of a tree by measuring and counting the rings. We looked at healthy plants and dead ones and observed that they were dead because of fungus growth in them. The children were exceptionally quiet and listening for sounds; they heard some birds singing and suddenly they spotted a toad and went wild!

I too am going wild, trying to cover so much about this beautiful theme of plants and growing things. What would we do without "the greens, the colors" in our lives I wonder...

Introducing Pennies for Peace at Summers- Knoll School

Among several  things that I really admire about SK,  community involvement is one of the best. Well, this time we are venturing out,  going a little bit further or rather way out there- helping build schools in the Eastern Hemisphere. We are collecting pennies for "Pennies for Peace" and joining  in with philanthropist  Mr. Greg Mortenson, founder of Central Asia Institute, in helping build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan (schools mostly to educate young girls).

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said numerous times, if children from very early on are introduced to compassion, it helps them develop their brain and they function much better as they mature. This is why I was exhilarated to begin this project.

This afternoon, we first read "Listen to the Wind", followed by watching a documentary on Pennies for Peace. Children were really engaged in the documentary and watched it in great silence. From time to time they asked numerous questions. They were flabbergasted to know that with ONE PENNY students can buy a pencil in those countries: and were  equally astonished to hear that $1.00 is all they need for their monthly fees. (Our students all together echoed... "Oh my goodness.") I can only imagine what was going on in their minds! As soon as it was over (I had prepared a jar for every classroom and  some pennies to start with) children started putting pennies in the jars. I heard some students say that they had some coins in their wallets and that they would like to give right away. It was so gratifying to see how giving our children are.

Let us all try to help ...by building peace.... one school at a time. Please, give generously.....every penny makes a mighty school.  Thank you.

Water H2O - water is life -

April showers bring May flowers.

 I am excited about this month's theme WATER. Nearly three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered by water. The water that the dinosaurs drank millions of years ago is the same water that we drink today. Will there be enough for a more crowded world? WATER IS LIFE.

Here are some topics that we will be learning about:-
1. What is the world made of? (All about solids, liquids and gases.)
2. Land and water forms- Ocean and seas - rivers and lakes. Children will experiment making lakes, islands, peninsulas, straits, gulfs and much more...
3. Experiments with water-  Did you ever drink blocks?
4.Where do we get our drinking water?
 Experiments:
a. Recycling water   b. Polluting water   c. Making drinking water.
5. What does water do?
a. Floating on water   b. Moving up and down.
6. What is so unusual about water?
 a. sticking together  b. getting bigger  g. melting away.
7. Fun with water.
8. How hot can it get?
9. Why do we have to store water?
10. Only 2.5 % of the Earth's water is fresh, what about the rest- 97.5 % ? What do we do with salty water? Can we drink it?

 We have done few experiments already! Children are asking for more to quench their thirst.


I will keep you posted.