Two weeks ago we began our classes. To be honest we had little idea how the class
would go despite being prepared for anything that came our way. How many children would show up? Would they like eating the food? Would they even care about the
gardening? Questions kept popping up
until the very last minute, and in the face of these questions we forged ahead
with smiles on our faces and passion in our hearts. We’ve been planning for months and it was
inspiring to see just how interested the kids seemed in the work we were
accomplishing.
The pictures in the post below document the first and second
classes from our kids program. We wanted
to start our classes with “get-to-know-you” games. This way they would feel more comfortable
interacting with a bunch of college students trying to lead them for two
hours. The kids were extremely
responsive to our guessing game which we played with fruits and
vegetables. We attempted to get the kids
to ask more thoughtful questions about themselves (in fruit/vegie form) rather
than “what color am I?” After a few rounds
of these games, it was time to introduce the kids to the tools we would be
using in the garden. Everything from
spades, to shovels, to trowel and rulers were exemplified to help better
prepare the kids for our gardening efforts.
We began our gardening efforts by preparing the beds to be
planted. In order to do this we
demonstrated how to turn over the dirt with the shovels and trowels. Before long the kids decided to go ahead and
drop their trowels digging in with their bare hands and truly becoming one with
the garden (pictures below)! After the
beds were properly turned it was time to split up and start planting. The kids got to visually see the difference
between bell pepper, chive, cilantro, pea, and radish seeds while helping plant
the five vegies in four different raised beds.
The planting was completed but before we could water our beds we
discovered a surprise in the compost pile!
A bunch of baby chipmunks squealing away definitely caught our attention
for a few minutes before we properly watered the beds.
On the menu for our afternoon was a fruit salad with vanilla
yogurt, cinnamon, and topped with walnuts.
The kids helped in preparing the strawberries, apples, and bananas for
mixing as well as measuring out the right amount of yogurt and cinnamon to add
to our giant bowl of fruit salad. Not many people wanted to add the walnuts,
but with a little persuading we were able to convince the kids to try at least
one walnut. We had such a great time sharing our new found knowledge of
gardening and cooking with the children who attended our first cooking class,
and I was even more excited to hear that we have expanded our attendance and
hopefully it will continue to grow as time progresses. More updates soon to come from the Program
Development Committee! And don’t forget
to take a look at the wonderful pictures from our classes in the posts below.
-Kyle Alexander, Program Development
-Kyle Alexander, Program Development
