Since planting our grass and basil seeds last week, we’ve seen much change in our room. The grass friends have grown enormously long hair. Today we took a poll to see who might want to give their grass a trim and who would like to let it grow. Surprisingly, most of the children wanted to let it grow. I did have one child tell me very somberly, “We are not allowed to cut our friends’ hair!” She felt a bit better when I explained that I meant the grass, not real hair. I’m wondering if we’ll have more “cutters” once they see the three who voted to trim going at their grass with scissors. One person did have a bit of an epiphany during morning meeting when he realized that it would grow back after the trim.
While we’ve been watching the grass shoot up this week, we’ve been logging our observations in our journals. The children are using a combination of “kid writing” and known words to write about the pictures that they draw. They have noticed roots growing, soft grass, wet dirt, and two colors on the grass. In this picture, R. is writing about how she sprays the grass with water to help it grow.
Our other plants have not be growing so profusely, but they are steadily changing from a simple pile of dirt. We created bottle planters for our basil plants so that they would stay watered with minimal help. Since their growth is so slow, these new plants have not quite caused the stir that the grass did, but some of the children are excited about the possibility of eating these new leaves. Hopefully, we’ll have at least one large plant per bottle eventually so you can share these at home.
We also began a project at the beginning of the week that I hope turns out as I’ve planned. We began a large classroom garden in a tub with grass seed and a path. The path was constructed using flat rocks the children collected outside. They have suggested that it would be a perfect walkway for ants. Let’s hope we don’t have any of those in our room roaming around! We’ll just have to wait and see how the grass seed does in this container. It is generally kept away from the window, so keep your fingers crossed!
