The Pierre de Coubertin Daycare Garden Club engaged in a hands-on activity to learn about garden design. After playing a game in the gym that demonstrated how different plants help each other out, Garden Club members put their new knowledge of companion planting into action by designing their own mini gardens in class together. Whether it was a bed of carrots, lettuce and beans, or tomatoes, marigolds and basil, the Garden Club came up with many different designs that all looked beautiful and delicious!

On Monday April 22, 2013, Michelangelo BASE Spring Green Club students let loose in the schoolyard to learn about an age-old technique in organic gardening: companion planting.

First, students played Pesky Pests, a special game of tag where “pesky pests” try to tag, or “eat,” basil plants—who can only find safety by linking arms with a mighty marigold flower. Through playing, students learned that planting marigolds near basil, tomatoes, eggplants and other plants can help deter certain pests in the garden that like to munch on these plants. By planting companion plants near each other in organic gardens, chemical pesticides are no longer necessary for pest control.

Next, we played a few rounds of Three Sisters, a game about the most famous companion plants in history: squash, corn and beans. Students worked in teams to form tableaus (pictures with their bodies), which demonstrate how the Three Sisters grow together. The corn grows straight and tall, the beans grow up around the sturdy corn and the squash provides a living mulch for the surrounding soil.

Spring Green Club members had a great time acting out all the different plants and learning about how companion planting is an important tool in organic gardens.

Students with their Winter Green Club log books.

During the Winter Green Club program we fed worms! We did the Winter Green Club in the lunch room, after school on Wednesdays. We fed the worms by cutting little pieces of fruit and vegetables.  Ms. Maddie chose to do this activity with us because it is fun and we get to learn new things. We learned that the worms turn our food into compost. They are vegetarians and they also eat egg shells. We also learned that the worms have five hearts and one brain. We loved learning about the worms but not all of us liked touching them!

The B.A.S.E Daycare Program offered a Radio Journalism Club to the Grade 2 and Grade 3 daycare students at Carlyle Elementary School on Friday afternoons from January to March 2013. B.A.S.E Tutor Jodi Schwartz facilitated the program.

The club recorded a radio play based off their storybook that they had written in the previous daycare extracurricular activities session titled: Only For Monsters. The children worked as a team in a collaborative environment while they got excited about recording and adding self-made sound effects. Students were learning while not even realizing it. Various topics were covered such as: radio voices, speaking slowly and clearly while recording, staying in character with their voices, and overall, bringing a story to life using only voices and sound effects.

The students also learned how to work as a team, how be consistent throughout a story line and how to use their imaginations to their full potential in order to produce a finished product that they can all be proud of. Most importantly, they had a great time participating in an educational activity. The radio play was a wonderful follow-up project to the storybook the students wrote. Please click below to listen to the Carlyle Daycare radio play titled: Only for Monsters.

Students write about the Winter Green Club.

St. Dorothy School Daycare’s Winter Green Club learned how to make pizza. We also learned how to make cheese and butter. Daycare Green Initiative Advisor, Ms. Maddie Guerlain, helped us become healthier by teaching us how to make healthy food. It is important to know how to make food because it is important to be able to feed yourself. Now we can make better homemade pizza instead of eating frozen pizza. To make the pizza we took some cheese and grated it. Then we cut the peppers, olives and other awesome vegetables. We also made our own tomato sauce. We hope we can make the pizza at home and have a great meal! Ms. Maddie was fun to hang out with. I hope we can have another Winter Green Club program with Ms. Maddie next year.

Students tend to the vermicompost.

Students at Bancroft Daycare tended their vermicompost, feeding the worms apple cores, vegetable scraps, tea bags and newsprint. The students tore the newspaper into little pieces so that it is small enough for the worms to eat; then they cut up the apple cores, vegetable scraps and tea bags and spread the worm food throughout the tub. Finally, students took a mental snap-shot of the compost tub, so that they will remember what it looked like when they next feed the worms.