Earth Day 2016: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore, Replenish

This week was filled with all sorts of Earth Day festivities--from growing our seedlings and planting seeds for our school garden to exploring and capturing the great outdoors. 

Our seedlings on Monday

Over the last two weeks, we've been growing our seedlings. They've made lots of growth already!

Our seedlings on Friday!

We've been continuing to write poems in Writer's Workshop, so we took the iPads outside to take some pictures that will inspire some of our poems when we return from vacation

On Friday, we had parent volunteers from the PTO visit our classroom. They helped us pick and plant seeds that will go into our school garden and we also got the chance to vote on the name of our new garden!

We also got a little crafty by using recycled tissue paper to create heart-shaped planets to show our love for our world

Lastly, we made one more ode to Earth Day by taking a quick hike on the trails in Stratham Hill Park. We took the trails all the way back to the pond by the base of the kill, where we got to see some handiwork done by the park's resident beavers! 

Happy Earth Day!

Greenhouse Growers

On Friday, we used our creativity along with our green thumbs to create and design our own greenhouses. While we aren't able to grow sunflowers in our greenhouses, we are growing lima bean plants! Just like sunflower seeds, lima beans are also edible seeds that grow into bean plants.

Before creating our greenhouses, Ms. Riley soaked the beans for a few hours to begin germination, which is the first stage in the life cycle of a plant when a seedling sprouts from a seed. After allowing the beans to soak for a bit, we decorated our own greenhouse templates which were found by Ms. Arnold next door! We cut out windows in our greenhouses where we stapled baggies that contained our beans and a moist paper towel to give our beans plenty of water for the weekend.

All of our greenhouses are busy growing our beans in our classroom windows, where they will get plenty of fresh air and sunshine. We can't wait to check them out on Monday and make a few observations!