A sprouting bean plant constructed on a felt board.

Teacher of two-year-olds Sue Hewitt reports that she has already planted with one group—“lettuce last week and will do radish planting this week. I like to do something that can mature and be harvested and eaten by the kids. We usually have a salad bar one day—pick and wash and spin lettuce and have kids each bring in one thing to be in the salad. Then set up a row like a real salad bar and they choose. Of course the croutons are often the most popular!” I think the children could make croutons with whole wheat bread and herbed olive oil.

Some of my students have planted sugar snap peas. The package says they will be ready to harvest in 62 days! While we wait we can sing a song by David Mallet, Inch by Inch, Row by Row. You can learn it from his children’s book of the same name, from a video his website, or from Pete Seegar.

See Pete Seegar’s rendition on YouTube to learn it, a good choice for young children too because the arrangement is simple–single performer, single instrument (banjo) and the audience participates.

Garden Song by David Mallett

CHORUS:
Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and hoe
And a piece of fertile ground.

Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
‘Till the rains come tumbling down.

(In the folksong tradition, another singer has added this verse.)

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
Gonna mulch it deep and low
Gonna make it fertile ground

Pullin’ weeds and pickin’ stones
We are made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
‘Cause the time is close at hand.

Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land.

CHORUS

Plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her loving care

CHORUS

Old crow watching hungrily
From a perch in yonder a tree
In my garden I’m as free
As that feathered thief up there

CHORUS

© Cherry Lane Music Co (ASCAP)

To closely observe pea seed sprouting, “plant” them in a clear container, right next to the wall of the container with damp paper towels inside. You can see that these sprouts have not been near a window—see how pale green they are!

—Peggy

Is the arrival of gardening catalogs inspiring you to dream about planting with your students, and plan a garden of any size? You know that people of all ages benefit from spending time outdoors and that your children were interested in seeds, perhaps in October if you carved a pumpkin, opened a milkweed pod, or cut vegetables to make “Stone Soup.” But how to be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew, that the garden will be a success and the children will learn concepts that are part of the National Science Education Standards, or your state’s standards?

Let the National Gardening Association do it for you by following the comprehensive gardening curriculum in their new book, Garden Adventures: Exploring Plants with Young Children, by Sarah Pounders. She urges us to start small so initial enthusiasm is not exhausted before the plants mature. I had the pleasure of reviewing an early draft of sections of the book, and I look forward to using the lessons, beginning with the first: “What is a plant?”. The Plant Parts reproducible page of a pea plant will prepare my students for planting peas in February . To attract butterflies, we’ll plant flowers (for nectar), and dill, parsley, milkweed, and cabbage plants (for caterpillar food) in April, or maybe May, depending on the weather!

Garden Adventures has an easy-to-follow layout with basic lessons expanded in the “Digging Deeper” sections, teacher background information, reproducible, and newsletters to send home. Photos of children gardening will show your students that even young children can be gardeners. The list of children’s books includes old favorites—The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter—and some new to me—Whose Garden Is It? by Mary Ann Hoberman. The National Gardening Association’s Kids Gardening website has additional activities and information.

I’ll pair this book with the book Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children by Karrie Kalich, Dottie Bauer, Deirdre McPartlin, from Red Leaf Press, and have the students do some tasting in spring, in anticipation of harvest in the fall.

Peggy

I recently received the first seed catalog in the mail. For those of us in the northern states, seeing the pictures of flowering plants is a harbinger of spring! In the same delivery was this issue of S&C, themed around plants. A coincidence?

Growing bean seeds is a standard activity in elementary science and a great way to learn about parts of a plant. This is also an effective medium for designing and implementing controlled experiments, and the authors of the articles in this issue have many suggestions for differentiating this activity so that the students aren’t doing the same thing each year.

In addition to the web resources at the end of each article, NSTA’s SciLinks database has dozens of websites related to plants. Enter plant as a keyword to get lists of websites related to plant growth, tropisms, plants as food, structure of seed plants, and parts of a plant.

Some of my favorites include Celebrating Wildflowers from the National Park Service, The Great Plant Escape from the University of Illinois (a Spanish version is available), and the Biology of Plants from the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The Teachers’ Domain website has several lesson plans related to plants. Living Life as a Plant and How Do Plants Get Energy are designed for the upper elementary grades. Exploring Plants and Plant Life Cycles are appropriate for the primary grades. All of these lessons incorporate multimedia and graphics as resources.

Horticulture: Just for Kids from Texas A&M University has suggestions for planting a school garden. If you’re not sure what to plant, the Montgomery County (MD) Department of Environmental Protection has suggestions for what to include in a Colonial Herb Garden (featuring plants found in colonial days) and a Shakespeare Herb Garden (plants mentioned in his plays). These lists may be of interest to your colleagues at the secondary level. I’ve also heard of schools planting “pizza gardens” with tomatoes, peppers, onions, basil, and oregano.

For more information on school and community gardens, check the KidsGardening website. Feel free to add your own suggestions as a comment here. Think Spring!