Healthy Waltham » Gardening

Stanley garden site

Maria — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:29:37 +0000

this is what it looked like in back of Stanley school before their garden:

May 2008 - Before the garden

and here it is in the fall of 2009:

Summer 2009 - The growing garden!

McDevitt garden – the beginning

Maria — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:18:26 +0000

McDevitt Middle School garden began in the summer of 2007 with a modest effort:

With free soil amendments donated by Agway in Waltham, we dug up a small patch and planted beans, tomatoes and marigolds with the summer program students. In the fall, we had a tiny harvest and collected marigold seeds with the afterschool EcoTeam.

The next spring, we planted raspberry canes in this location, and a seedless Concord grape vine. That summer, the EcoTeam built McDevitt’s first raised bed. They wrote about this in their website.

This fall, the original McDevitt garden was a flourishing raspberry patch with a grape vine beginning to cover the fence:

Pumpkin Lesson

NinaR — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:23:55 +0000

Pumpkin Lesson

1^st Grade

(45 min.)

Book: Pumpkin Jack by: Will Hubbell

Learning Objectives:

- Make seasonal connection to plant life cycles

- Introduce vocabulary related to plant life cycles

- Connect themes of seasons, life cycles, and gardening to the children’s lives

- Obtain viable pumpkin seeds to plant next spring

Science vocabulary:

Life-cycle

Frost

Rot

Book vocabulary:

Fierce (intense, angry)

Jack-o’-lantern (pumpkin with a face)

Spell (magic)

Wrinkled (wrinkled clothes have many lines & folds in them)

Beneath (the snow)

Faded (lost color)

Withered (leaves)

Generous (Tim was generous. He gave away all of the pumpkins but the one he kept for himself.)

Supplies:

1 big pumpkin

sharp serrated knife

Newspaper

Plastic bowels or other containers

Paper towels

Dry-erase board, chalkboard, or smartboard

Set-Up:

Spread thick newspaper over tables. Set a plastic bowl or container on each table.

Keep pumpkin at the front of the room so that children entering can see and touch it.

Lesson:

1) Gather as a group on the floor or in chairs with the teacher at the front with a dry-erase board (or chalkboard, or Smartboard).

Introduce themes of seasons, life cycles, and kids gardening.
Go over key science vocabulary.

2) Go over key vocabulary found in the book Pumpkin Jack

Read Pumpkin Jack

3) Make connections between the story and the children’s lives at home/school.

Ask who has carved a pumpkin with their family? Seen jack-o-lanterns in their neighborhoods?
Who has seen pumpkins growing in the garden at school? At another farm or garden?
Who has ever planted a seed? During what season? Who has eaten pumpkin seeds? What season?
How many seeds are in a pumpkin? How many seeds does it take to grow a pumpkin plant? How many pumpkins can one plant grow?

4) Teacher carves the top off the pumpkin and lifts it to show all the seeds. Then everyone separates into smaller groups at their tables.

At each table, the children have a turn to reach into the pumpkin and grab a handful of seeds and “guts.”
Using their hands, they separate the seeds from the “guts” and put the clean seeds into a container to save them.

5) Clean up!

When the whole table is finished, they can go wash their hands in the bathroom.
b. The teacher collects all the clean pumpkin seeds and, outside of class time, washes them with water in a colander and spreads them out on clean paper towels to dry overnight. Then, they must be stored over the winter in a cool, dry place. To be planted by the same students in the Spring!

Building a Garden at McDevitt

Maria — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:36:58 +0000

This summer, a group of Waltham middle-schoolers built a raised-bed garden at the McDevitt Middle School as part of Healthy Waltham’s summer program. Read all about it in the Daily News Tribune article.

McDevitt Garden Interview

Maria — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:38:50 +0000

In the summer of 2008, students from the McDevitt Middle School summer gardening program learned about growing vegetables at the garden located right outside their school. Students interviewed Judy Fallows, Healthy Waltham’s Director and the force behind Waltham’s school gardens, about the McDevitt program. The interview can be viewed here: