August 18: Scrapbook day

Making Memories !

Today, we spent a while weeding the garden as the radish plants were twisted all together. We also found many slugs which we took out and moved out of the garden. The kids loved getting their hands dirty and pulling all the slimy slugs out!

Then, we handed out sheets of coloured paper and had the kids decorate it as they wished. We also stuck a small bubble to each page that asked a question like, "What is your favourite vegetable?". The kids loved decorating the papers with stickers, paint, glitter, and feathers so much so that many of them wanted to do another one. We will be putting each of these papers into a scrapbook for Kids Grow! to remember this summer in the garden.

We ended the sunny morning off with a few games of farmer and the animals. Thanks for coming out everyone and make sure to join us for the harvest picnic in September!

Scavenger Hunt Extravaganza!

We're into August and our garden is a jungle! The daikon is towering like skyscrapers, and the beans are spiralling into the clouds. The vision of our garden inspires the kids and they sit down to illustrate what they see. How different it looks from the beginning of June, when all that could be seen was the brown soil of the plot. Now green overwhelms the scene, while yellow squash flowers explode joyful blooms. The red and orange vibrance of the nasturtiums contrast wildly with the soft green blades of corn leaves. Everywhere is spotted with colour and joy. We feel calm and awe in the miracle of our garden.

The radishes are in abundance so we try to pull some of them up. Their roots smell sharp and pungent. Some of us crunch on the crisp snap peas, or steal some sweet raspberries from our neighbours stand.
Today we are going to have a really fun scavenger hunt. Each of us receives a card and marker to check off what we find. All sorts of nature things are on our list. We must find a bird, a butterfly, and two ripe strawberries, an orange flower, and a lonely pear tree. We also have to look for a Ken doll doing the splits, a pink pig with blue earrings, and a bunck of puzzle pieces.

The kids scatter with excitement and search all over the orchard to find the hidden things. Some kids work togther, and others go it alone. Sometimes they ask each other for help, utilizing the power of the collective and mutual assistance. Eventually everything is found on our search cards and now we are immersed in solving the puzzle. Both kids and adults work together, sharing in the enjoyment of accomplishing our goal.

A fresh, juicy watermelon is on the menu for snack time. The kids gobble their pieces up and start into making recipe cards for our scrap book. This is a crazy project in which the kids can learn about the types of things needed for a recipe: Ingredient lists, and directions as well as all different types of foods. We need to put measurments in our recipes as well, and of course a great title. The kids create all kinds of recipes some very practical, and others wild and silly.

Our little garden community is getting stronger and stronger. We love spending Saturday mornings together!

Healthy Food

Learning  about healthy food doesn't have to get complicated. When we look at food as a compiltaion of nutrition facts and figures it can start to boggle the brain, but when we keep it simple, things start to make sense.

Today at the garden we discovered the bounty of yummy and nutritious foods growing right here in the city. We found strawberries, saskatoons and raspberries as well as snap peas and even some edible flowers. From our findings we made paper plate faces that were both fun and tasty! There were angry faces, and lion faces, and beautiful gaia princess faces. Making a fun activity out of eating was a great way to encourage the kids to experiment with tasting new foods.

After gobbling up our faces, we listened to a story about the different food groups. We discovered that grains such as wheat, rice, and quinoa give us energy so that we can play endurance demanding games like tag or hockey. The bright colours of fruits and vegetables provide us with antioxidants that protect our bodies from getting sick. Dairy foods like milk provide calcium for our bones to grow, and protein foods like beans, meat, and fish help build our muscles so that we can be strong. Healthy fats are also really important for our brains and organs, so eating foods like nuts and seeds can make us smart!

We enjoyed eating in our garden today, and learning about the foods we put in our bodies.  We all agreed that healthy food can be tasty, fun to eat, as well as good for us.

Wild Medicine

It is a warm and lovely morning as the kids begin to trickle their way to the garden. Hidden amongst the broad green leaves that continue to sprawl from our garden plot, lay the tasty fruit of our labour. We are so excited to see our garden bloom!

We are lucky today, as we have a very special guest. Kalyn Byrne, a Clinical Herbalist, is here to talk to us about responsible wildcrafting and where to find the abundant medicines in our community. Wildcrafting is a term people use when they talk about collecting wild plants. We learn that it is really important not to take too much of the generous plants around us and to be sure to leave a lot for both the animals that rely on them, and the future generations that may need them for their use. Ethical wildcrafting is based on the belief that we as humans are stewards of the earth, and we must protect and encourage the growth of wild medicines rather than exploit and monopolize them for our own selfish desires.

Kalyn has brought some special frames with her for us to create our own plant part collage. After receiving the rules about ethical wildcrafting, we set out to find pieces of plants to decorate our picture. Not only will these plant pieces contribute to a beautiful work of art, but they will help remind us of the plants we sourced, and their magical benefits.

The kids immediately dart off to find interesting shapes of leaves and colourful flower petals, while some of the parents pick Kalyn's brain about the properties and uses of some of the wild herbs we are discovering in and around the orchard. We learn that strawberry leaves contain high amounts of vitamin C, and that every part of the dandelion plant can be used as an effective medicine for our well being.

In a small area by the side of the gravelly road we find a variety of plants, all of which can be used as medicine. What many people see as weeds are, in actual fact, very powerful medicines over which we tread every day.

Finally, we finish collecting our plant pieces and begin to construct our collages. The kids focus on making excellent works of art that they can hang in their rooms and remember the plants they used.

Once we thank Kalyn for her generosity of knowledge, we decide it's a good time to enjoy a snack of sliced cucumbers and grape tomatoes. Then we have a fallen apple collection race, and everyone returns with a ton of apples. Everyone is a winner when we tell them what we will be doing with the bounty of fruit. Apple butter will be on the menu at our harvest picnic!

One more surprise is on the itinerary today, as it is International Day of Dancing! Everone gets on the dance-orchard floor and busts a move in a game of freeze dance. What a way to start the week-end!