A Most Productive Day

We got so much accomplished today. First we checked our flower jars. Some of us have sprouts that are pretty big. Some of us still don't have any green shoots. And some of us had green sprouts, but now they aren't there. We're learning that seeds sometimes grow correctly and sometimes they don't. All in all, it's pretty interesting.
Then Mrs. M. showed us how some of the plants in our classroom reproduce, which makes more of itself. Two plants grows new plants from the underground root. Another plant grows baby plants on a shoot shot out from the plant's stems and leaves. We are going to have quite a few baby plants to pot later this winter.




Next we went outside and did some dead-heading and thistle pulling in the front gardens. It will look very nice for the Halloween parade this afternoon. Last we help Mr. Oscar bring six containers of mulch to the hosta garden. The mulch is like a blanket for the hosta roots. They will be nice and warm during the winter.
We had hoped to put the stepping stones in the outdoor classroom today. (All the kids in school got to put a thumb print on one. They look really cool.) But no one contacted us about donating the crushed rock or gravel for the stepping stone area. Hopefully we can get that here next week and then place all our paw prints.
Mrs. M. said she'd post some photos for this entry later.

The next steps . . .

Our paw print stepping stones look soooo awesome! Today we stained the rest of them in our school colors, yellow and blue. Then we started writing the classroom teachers' names on them. We also put what grade they teach and the school year, 2008-2009. We used paint pens for that. The blue one was being difficult, and then the tip for the gold pen got really short. They turned out okay, though. Then we wrote a letter to the classroom teachers inviting them to come to the Challenge classroom sometime next week. We want every student to put a thumb-print on their classroom's paw print. They will get to use whatever color paint they want. It is going to look so cool when they are all done. We are planning to place all the stepping stones next Friday. Keep your fingers crossed that we have good weather.

Another step closer

We took our paw print stepping stone out of the mold today and took a look at which of our trinkets we could see. Only a few are showing. We were really surprised to see some very light weight things, like a guitar pick and some coins, had stayed put and are easily seen. Next week we'll be finishing up all the paws so that each classroom can come and put their thumb prints on their class's personal stepping stone. We are planning to put them all in the garden on Halloween!

We went outside to check out our new deck. It was put in last weekend. We think it looks pretty great! We also checked out the area where our stepping stones are going to be. There is a pretty nice space for them, but we need something to fill in the gaps around where our stepping stones will be. So when we came back inside, we wrote a letter to local landscaping companies to ask for donations of crushed rock, small pebbles or pea gravel to fill it in. That will make it even easier for us to maintain, since we won't need anyone to mow any grass! We hope someone will have some material we can have.

Maybe a little tooooo quick

This past Friday, we were a small group. 2nd grade was on a field trip, so 3rd grade got to make the Challenge paw print stepping stone. We used Quick-Set cement and boy was it quick! A little too quick. It hardened in the bucket before we could pour it in the mold. Most of the Challenge kids had put little souvenirs in the mold to represent themselves. Once we poured the cement, a lot of the light-weight things floated to the top. The super balls were the worst. Mrs. M kept poking them back down with a pencil but they would come back up. Finally, when the cement was hardening, they would stay down. We can't wait to see which of our trinkets will be able to be seen. What was really cool though was how when we poured it, the concrete was cold. But as it started to get hard, it got HOT!

We took a look at our jar plants. Some of us have new sprouts, some of us don't. One of us even has 2! Two of us have sprouts underground but next to the glass. We took some moisture readings and gave the soil some water if it was too dry. Then we placed them all back in the sunshine.

Finally, we went outside and did some more weeding in our hosta garden. There's a weed in there that looks like really big creeping Charlie. It is really rooted in there well. We pretty much left it alone. The grass, though, was easier to pull up. And we kept amazing ourselves with how long of a root we could pull out. We took a look at the outdoor classroom space and pulled up a few big weeds there, too. The deck was put in this weekend! We'll have to get all our paw print stepping stones out there pretty soon.

Attack of the Thistle Enemy

When we went outside today, we had 2 jobs to do. We dead-headed the marigolds and the mums in the front of the school. The marigolds were in the barrel garden and the mums were in the reading garden. Dead-heading means taking off the dead flowers by pinching the stem under the old bloom. Our fingers smell like flowers now. It was pretty easy to dead-head. Then we put on our gloves and started to pick thistle. The thistle had invaded our reading garden! Even when we had our gloves on, the thistle felt prickly when we picked it. They are mean nasty enemies to the plants we want in the garden and our fingers. We made a big difference after we picked all of the thistle out.
We learned about some of the grasses that are planted in the garden. The grasses have "feathery things" on the top of them that are actually their seed pods. When the seeds dry out later this fall, they will fall down and go into the soil. Next year we'll have even more grasses.
We also found a few more interesting things in the garden today, like two different kinds of mushrooms. Mushrooms are good for the earth because they are decomposers. That means they break up dead plant material to make food for the soil. Mushrooms are also called fungus. We also found some white mold growing in the mulch. Mold is another decomposer. Decomposers show up when there's been lots of rain.
There was also a cricket hopping around in there. We found a grub, but we threw him away because he is a pest.