Mr. McGregor's Garden Continued....

So my little Junior Master Gardeners were gathered today to learn how to read and order seeds from a seed catalog. They were excited to see all of the different varieties of tomatoes, flowers, and even plants they never heard of. We discussed varieties of seeds and what is best to grow in Wisconsin. Let's just say that everyone of them wanted to plant watermelon and cantaloupe. Not the best growing season for them here. So onto other vegetables that were planted in Mr. McGregor's garden that Peter ate and saw on his adventure. We found beans, lettuce, radish, and parsley...all the items he ate. Then we researched cabbage and onions what he saw. We want to create Mr. McGregor's theme garden with a scarecrow made of a blue jacket and brown shoes. We even have a ceramic bunny that is Peter. The tough thing now is to teach them what they could plant in one five by five raised garden. So check out what I did...(the veggies are not perfect, but the size is pretty close. They each got to be an expert on one veggie and then discussed why they should plant it in a particular spot). This made perfect sense and it was all up to them...not me! Ownership is key to veggie eating buy in!

Plotting Mr. McGregor's garden with second and third graders

We even plotted bush beans and pole beans. Great way to add math into your garden as well! Perimeter, area, square footage and more...

Peter Rabbit In The Garden

Today, marked our second week of our Farm To School Class. With snow once again covering our garden, we worked on some great indoor garden activities. With our olders, we separated our groups into 6 garden teams. Each team is setting up a greenhouse to grow one vegetable. One team planted eggplant, tomatoes, pumpkins, basil, cucumbers, and peppers. They determined the price point at .50 cents a plant. They created a green house name and will be marketing their products. We will be doing research and making commercials to play on our school announcements. We will be created a slogan and a store for our plants for our May 19th plantapalooza event.



Our youngers, heard the Tale of Peter Rabbit. We reviewed what vegetables Peter ate and saw in Mr. McGregor's garden. We will be creating a garden for Peter Rabbit along with a blue coat and shoes as a scarecrow. I have 9 little girls that squealed with excitement.  We stopped off after our sheets were done to play with Peter Rabbit on his official site.. We will be planting lettuce, radish, beans, and parsley fore sure. Here are the sheets we used for this week in garden club.

Our bigs...

And the sheets for our littles...

If you would like a copy press on this Garden Green House and Peter Rabbit Sheets.

Farm To School Fun!

This week, we started our Thomas Jefferson School Garden Club. We have 18 students from 2nd- 5th grade signed up to be our ambassadors of the garden. We started with a tour of the garden. The snow is almost gone...okay I looked again...today's rain took care of it all! This week, we learned about rotation farming and we set goals for bigger and better this year. We cleaned out the garden beds and even planted our first seeds of the season! We learned the importance of what we can learn from a seed packet and even learned that we are a zone three. Looks like no planting outside until May... we might sneak some seeds in the ground the last week of April like our radishes, peas, kale, and spinach. We have 16 raised beds and garden plots. Our compost is getting dumped off on Monday. We will be adding more beds to make sure this next school year we have veggies for our lunchroom!

Our Garden without plants and snow...it snowed today:(

3rd grade Bonnie Cabbage Competition is under way!

How are seeds the same and different...kinders now know!

Our garden goals for this year are:
Kinders are growing our pumpkin patch, firsties... the sunflower garden for our insects and butterflies...2nds are heading up the tomatoes, peppers, and squash plants that we will be planting in the garden. Our 3rd-5th graders will be working in the after school garden class to plant veggies that we will sell at our Plantapalooza event in May as well as making sure the rest of the seeds are planted in the ground in May.

Mentor Texts

I am so lucky to be teaching science, but I do miss the regular classroom. I use to use mentor texts in reading to tie what I needed to teach in science and social studies. Ideas By Jivey this week uses sites that have created ideas to tie science into the classroom. That is what I get to do each week.

Now that I just teach science, I am lucky to use mentor text each week in Kindergarten through fifth grade...wherever it works. This week, I am using the following mentor texts to integrate reading and science into my classroom...stop by each week to see what picture books and non fiction text I am using...

Kinders... so cute to add...in our kinder"garden" after each page...until when we harvest...in first grade!

This insect book is a great way to introduce the unit...write what they know... and then when we are done...what they learned. Check out my post below for what we did!

2nd graders are using a beautiful book that we use to learn about seeds. 

I have seeds in containers for us to compare and contrast. We try to guess what they will grow into and review what the book taught us about seeds. They each get a seed packet to draw the seed and what they can learn from a sleepy seed once it is in the ground. We then plant a seed.



Third graders will be continuing to learn about sound and we are using this non-fiction book to review our vocabulary words: pitch and volume as well as vibration.

Our fourth graders are using The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons to introduce the phases of the moon. I love the rap that we also use to incorporate song whenever possible.

Mentor texts are then used to give to my classroom teachers to reread or use in the classroom or I even give my teachers other book options to use in reading and writing in the classroom.

Foss Friday and Peek at My Week

It has a busy week in the Science School Yard. It is Farm to School Garden time and three new FOSS kits are starting this next week. Busy...busy... I am linking up with my blogger buds at

 Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and  Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for this linky party!

This week in the School Yard:
Kinders- What are seeds? We are starting with a poster entitled...Seeds with the words CAN, ARE, HAVE, NEED. Our kinders don't seem to know much about seeds. They say that seeds have stems and flowers. That my cuties is a plant. I then hand out the variety of seeds I have that we plant in our school garden. Our garden is cleaned out and ready to go! We then go back to the poster where we now add what we know about seeds. I read the story The Garden We Grow. Or kinders will be planting a kinder"garden" starting next week. They are growing a pumpkin patch for next fall where they will be able to see how they grow and the plants grow too. It takes time to get big doesn't it. I read the story and add in our kinder"garden" after each page...until we pick the pumpkins...in first grade. They love it. I get to practice on one class before the start of next week. It went well.

Firsties- are using the FOSS kit insects, but before we get our meal worms and painted ladies, we need to know what an insect is. We read the book Do You Know about Insects? But before we read it, we add to a poster what we know and our misconceptions...then we learn from the book and add what we learned. As I read I sing the song head, thorax, abdomen to head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Cute stuff. We also chant, egg, larva, pupa, adult. Yea! They remember then! We then make an insect, but remember what everyone of our insects must have when we make it. We build a bug and add it to our board. We finish with a bug hunt outside.

2nd graders- Plants! I love this unit. It sure helps when we grow our own garden at school. I am using our Plant Unit that I made with two other science teachers to incorporate NGSS and FOSS. Plants: A Comprehensive Unit. I will start with building a greenhouse. We want to also know what plants need. We will use the story A Seed Is Sleepy to learn about seeds first. We will be opening up a seed and taking a look inside. I will add a sheet next week that I am adding to the unit.

3rd graders- Sound is the name of the game. We learned about the difference between pitch and volume. We will be reviewing with a quick quiz to check for understanding. We will continue by watching Study Jams Sound. The new words we will add vibration, frequency, decibels, hertz, and echo. Quick quiz time again. Students then will do stations that deal with vibrations, decibels, and frequency. Slinky model and sound waves and pitch.... long gong.... tuning fork in water. We will wrap up with all the words while showing the amplifier.

4th graders- we will continue to learn about the solar system. We are finishing up on what we learned about the Earth, Sun, and Moon. We are working on fact building with stations. We are using a matching activity from the Science Penguin, then a quick quiz to see what they remember.

After they are done with a quick review...we are working on the concept of cycles around us. Tides, seasons, day and night, and lunar cycles. We are finishing up with this great rap and start of the lunar model using Oreos and this great free download from Balancing Everything.

Fifth graders: Oh, My, Gosh...I am so excited about their cardboard arcade games. We started them this last week for about 10 minutes of supply getting. Some groups are already almost done. These games will be played at our Title 1 night: Hmong Heritage Celebration and 5th Grade Cardboard Arcade. The game with the most tickets gets featured at our school carnival that weekend! When students are done with their game, they are working on the past, present, future lesson in the Cardboard Arcade Simple Machines Unit. I love this unit! We did the scavenger hunt and vocabulary matching. The kids were completely engaged in the activity! They now are understanding simple machines even better!

Have a great weekend!

Our Finished Food Chain Art Project

Mother Nature...Where is Spring?

So, last night we rode back from Milwaukee with the fear that we were driving north to meet up with another "winter" storm. As we pulled into our city over 4 hours of driving... we drove into one of the most beautiful scenes I had ever seen. It had rained a few hours before we drove in and every tree was covered with magic. I mean beautiful glassy, shimmery ice. I tried to capture it this morning as the ice was still on the trees. Okay...so I am hating snow...I mean HATING snow at this point, but this was something special and about an hour later it warmed up and was gone. So was the magic. Still have now only a foot of snow in our yard and a great idea for a writing activity for next week's i/e group though.

Here is the link to the to the writing activity I am going to do with my i/e kiddos...

                                       Mother Nature We Need Spring

We are going to persuade Mother Nature to help the snow melt here in Wisconsin. We shall see what the kiddos say. One last funny note...I took my own 2 out of 4 kids to the beach over vacation...take a look at the winter jackets. Lake Michigan was COLD! I needed to get rocks though for a school garden project for later. Hopefully, spring is right around the corner. Hope my students can persuade Mother Nature to agree to help us out. 

Currently April 3rd already!

Currently, I should be socializing with relatives, but I need to connect with  Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade.

Why do I always want to do currently on the first of every month, but every time it takes me at least three days to sit down and do what I need to do. I am here in Milwaukee, finding time to link up as we share some quality time with my husband's sister and her family. Love antiquing and trying to find some treasures for my daughter's new apartment. Found a free mirror in my sister in law's garage.

Currently, I am linking up and knowing that our three hour ride will help me continue to work on my farm to school after school activities. I am also happy that my husband currently is figuring out a way to see his brother who we haven't seen in a few years. It makes me happy currently.

I am also currently interested to see when everyone is done with school and what time everyone starts and ends there day. I hope that those of you out there that are on vacation this week are enjoying your days off. Vacation sure is going by fast.

Happy April. I was hoping March would go out like a lamb...but the lion is still roaring loud here in Wisconsin. Wish I was somewhere warm, but currently I am toasty inside.