News-Press Southwest Florida, USA www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070118/NEWS0108/701180353
January 18, 2007 Students' senses blossom in garden By Christina Cepero (see website for nice pics and video) Four first-grade classes at Pinewoods Elementary in Estero are growing a garden as an educational exercise with the help of teachers, parents and community partners. It's divided into the five senses: ? Leafy plants and a sweet potato in a jar for touching. ? Zinnias and yellow and copper marigolds for seeing. ? Green peppers, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, watermelon and pineapples for tasting. ? Mint, lavender, parsley, basil and sage for smelling. ? Wind chimes made out of silverware and cans on a bamboo tree for hearing. Six-year-old Andrew Herrera's favorite sense is tasting, especially the watermelons. "I like eating," he said. "I never gardened before." On Wednesday, he planted cucumbers with classmates. Other children weeded, watered and sprinkled coffee grounds donated by Starbucks as nutrient for the plants. And some spread human hair over the plants. "It scares away the rodents and the rabbits because of the human smell," teacher Jane Swedish said. "My husband owns a barbershop. I go once a week to get hair out of his garbage can." Zac Cooper, 6, asked for help planting a whitish dusty miller in the touching section. "I can't bury it," he told her. She helped him find a shovel. "I just like looking at it, and kind of doing the work," Zac said. Last Friday, they harvested vegetables and had a salad and salsa-making party. The idea for a garden sprouted in September after Swedish found a paper from 1975 where she had jotted "five senses garden" as an intern preschool teacher in Michigan as a potential project. Before starting, they took a field trip to Driftwood Garden Center in Estero, which donated different types of mulch. Each child also got a begonia to plant. "Each child was given a fake dollar, they went through the line to the cash register and paid," Swedish said. "We had a dig day" in September. Parents helped them spread topsoil and till the patch of grass outside of their classrooms. One parent donated child-size park benches. Home Depot, Tony Custom Lawn and Landscaping and Ruck Bros. Brick donated bricks, pavers, bushes and trees. The kids used wet newspaper to lay under the mulch to prevent weeds. "Plus the newspaper is supposed to be good for the earth," Swedish said. They used the plastic wrapping of soda six-packs to make a fence around the vegetables. They also reused items as fertilizer. A parent brought in biodegradable packing peanuts that were inside an item she got during the holidays. They poured hot water over them and dissolved them into the soil. "We carved pumpkins at Halloween and then sat them in the garden and watched them decompose," Swedish said. "The kids would come around saying, 'They're melting. They look like old men.'" The children were amazed at how the zinnias, which they planted as seeds, have grown to about 2 feet tall. "They would come after the weekend and (gasp)," Swedish said. The passion vine in the seeing section attracts black and orange caterpillars with little spikes. "That is one of the most fun things for them, to just go and pick those caterpillars up," teacher Monica Dinwiddie said. Each time the children work in the garden, they log what they did in journals through the scientific process. "They came up with a question, then hypothesis. They've been recording the procedures," Dinwiddie said. "We teach a lot of things to them, not only science. Math. We read a lot of literature about planting gardens. Discipline - that goes with character education." Kindergartners planted the carrots. Pre-kindergartners helped cut hair to place over the touching section. "We kind of welcome anybody to come in and help grow it," Swedish said. Third-graders are measuring the perimeter of the garden for a fence and are using it as inspiration to write haikus ? poems about nature. "We want to keep it through the years and expand it," Swedish said.
