This was going to be our last week of planting and gardening, but the children
have been so curious and motivated and want to know more. You know, Mary and I
sat down and said, "Our original plan was this, but, you know, how - what else can we
do? How can we take this farther? What else can we give them?" Because when they
feel honored and their interests and their curiosities are brought in
it just makes - we are able to go deeper and get even more information. - We decided
that what we would do is we would teach the children that we can start plants
from seeds, we can also start them as seedlings and plant them in the ground.
So that's what we're doing today, and that's why we decided that this would be
the next step in that learning process, is planting an actual seedling, and then
taking care of it. Watering it, watching it grow, and following it through till
it's ready to actually have the children take it home and transplant it. - It was
important for the children to understand how it begins and the steps and the
stages in which it will grow, and also to know that once they have that seedling,
they planted it and it produces, that it can start all over again. That this isn't
something that's just one time. They can actually take some of the tomatoes that
the plant produces, cut them open, find the seeds, investigate them, and start the
process all over. I started with just the five stages. As you look into it, you can
kind of, get into the nitty-gritty details, but for children who are three
four and five, I chose five. I felt like they were able
to handle that much information and decipher between the different stages.
So they took a long sheet of paper, numbered the top of the paper one
through five, cut the section so that it was like a little flip book, and underneath
each section, they had to decide which picture showed the first step, which was
the seed, the second step which was the small seedling, the third step, the
medium-sized seedling, the fourth and then the fifth. And at that point I let
them independently decide where the pictures fell, and that allowed me to see,
and kind of evaluate their understanding of the lesson. - And I think that that's
where STEAM education is all tied together. So what we do with STEAM is we
bring the science, the technology, the engineering, the art, and the math
together. So - so in that activity you had a math component, you had the science
component, and again with our program in other areas, we bring in the art,
the technology, and then the - not so much engineering at this point, we do that in
other areas of our program. Just earlier in the week we did a story called, "Tops
and Bottoms," which was a wonderful literature experience that also is
integrated into our program and we discussed plants that grow on the top
and plants that grow underneath the ground. And then we actually did an art
activity where the children were using watercolors and they were using the oil
pastels to illustrate some of the vegetables that we read about in the
story. So we're recalling and we're actually tying all of that into what
we're doing so that it really reaches all different types of learners. We do
songs, we do stories, we do our, our hands-on experiences, and we give them
many opportunities throughout the program to model and to demonstrate
their understanding. We were even on the playground yesterday and, and one of our
students was pulling roots and pulling things out of the ground and, "Come see,
come see, there's a stem, there's a root!" And so you're starting to see their
excitement and they're, just, enthusiasm about their understanding and that
transfer of knowledge from, from one aspect of their day into life
experiences. And so my hope is that they're taking those same skills and
that same understanding and bringing it home and sharing it with their families
and with those around them.