Garden Club at Meiners Oaks School

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     Our Garden Club continues to flourish with the help of many volunteers under one leader, David White. The students' benefit from a weekly observance of their garden. David leads them through the whole process of tending to a garden. The students weed, harvest seeds, plant, cultivate, water, compost and gather their variety of nutritious food. There is an energy in the garden and it is bursting with activity. There are students learning lessons through experience and hands-on activities.

     David is associated with our "Food for Thought" program ( a program that funds education for students on food and nutrition from farm to table) and he in turn has a few volunteers each week that help him with all the tasks a garden brings. He has knowledge of the garden cycle and each week has a few groups do the needed jobs. All students are welcome.

     We also have parent volunteers join us each week, they bring their wok and cook fresh food from the harvest. This is a wonderful added treat and enjoyed by all.

     Bridging the gap from harvest to table is a great effort by all. The garden networked with the cafeteria, district food service, and harvested 18 lbs. of broccoli. It was on the lunch menu for the next day. This was great motivation, and everybody wanted to buy lunch that day. The hope is to have more of this involvement and communication.

     We then had an assembly that honored Dr. Seuss and Lorax Day. We chose to plant a tree on this day and sent out flyers. We planted a valley oak tree, and honored students who had 10 weeks of attendance to garden club with special hats. This was attended by the whole school. We read from the story and shared some facts about the tree and then we planted it on our grounds. This was a wonderful motivator for Garden Club and added literature to our natural classroom.

    At the end of the presentation we gave each student calendula seeds to plant at home. These were harvested from the garden that day. We also read the end of the story, which encourages others to plant.

     We adopted a motto, " It takes a Village to Pay It Forward", and we had an assembly to celebrate our cornerstones. The sixth grade played their violins and they did a skit about going to garden club. The song they played was from the movie, "Pirates of the Carribean". This helped students remember which cornerstone the garden club was associated with.

     This Natural Classroom is very successful at Meiners Oaks School due to our "Village" of helpers.