5th Grade Native American Trade Story

In the first quarter of the school year, the 5th grade learned about many things, including economic systems in the Native American cultures throughout history. Two students wrote and filmed this wonderful story. Enjoy!

3rd Grade Video Podcast

Check out one of our 3rd Grade Student's video podcast that highlights the learning of our students during the 1st quarter here at Edison.

Community Night - Success!

Everyone that came to Community Night had a wonderful time! Here is a highlight video that shows what the night was like.

Podcast Episode #3

On this episode:

• what has been happening in the first quarter
• the all new Edison website is online
• 4th grade teacher and students talk about Isle Royale

Holiday Parade 2008

Saturday November 8 was a big day for Edison Environmental Science Academy! We had more than 30 people from our school, including teachers, parents, and students, march in the annual holiday parade in downtown Kalamazoo. We also launched our new website at http://www.edisonmagnet.org

Here is a montage of pictures from the parade.

Gathering Data From Students

Edison students have been busy learning and are wrapping up the first quarter. One of the ways teachers can assess student learning is with Classroom Response Systems, or "clickers".

Each student is assigned a clicker that communicates back to the teacher computer wirelessly. A test is projected onto the SMARTBoard, the students make their choices, and their answers are recorded. The teacher is then able to analyze that data, adjust instruction if necessary, and provide data to administration.

The clickers are one more example of using technology to engage students in the learning process. Students have been gathering data throughout the quarter, and now they are excited to give data back to their teachers in a new and fun way!

1st Grade Pumpkin Seed Counting

Two of our first grade teachers brought their classes together for a messy and fun counting activity. There's nothing like putting your hands down inside a slimey pumpkin and pulling the seeds out!

3rd Grade Visits Gene the Pumpkin Man

The entire third grade took a field trip to see Gene the Pumpkin Man this week! Gene is a local farming legend, having been in business for 51 years. He was also recently recognized with an award from the Farm Bureau. His pumpkin farm has been in his family since the late 1880's when his grandfather started it.

We learned many things from Gene. Did you know there are the same number of seeds in a small pumpkin as there are in a large one? Pumpkins don't grow as well when there is too much rain. We were learning about scarcity and surplus as Gene explained that some years he grows more pumpkins than others. Scarcity can affect the prices people pay at the store.

Here is a video of our trip to Gene the Pumpkin man. Thanks again, Gene!

Recycling with Art

Fourth grade students recycled old jeans from home into book bags for the back of their classroom chairs. Recycling is good for the environment and can be fun and useful!

Fish Hatchery Video

Here is a video from our field trip to the fish hatchery.

Fish Hatchery Field Trip

The entire first grade went to the fish hatchery this week. There was a lot of learning happening there and back at the classroom as Edison students were able to see firsthand part of the life cycle of fish in Michigan.

Each year in October, the people from the hatchery collect eggs and milt from the fish in their native habitat. Then they put the two together so that little fish are made. Different fish are treated in different ways as they incubate. Some do better in warmer water while some do better in colder water.

We learned that fish are an important part of our environment and our economy in Michigan. Fish contribute to the health of lakes and streams, but they are also popular for sport fishing, which affects our state economy.

After our trip to the fish hatchery, we came back to school and enjoyed a wonderful lunch as we discussed all the things we learned. Fish are important to Michigan and we need to take care of them!

Slideshow from Cleanup Day

Here is a Flickr slideshow from the awesome cleanup day we had last weekend. In total, we had nearly 40 volunteers come to help. Thanks to Lowes for the generous grant that paid for the materials! Special thanks to Big Apple Bagels on South Westnedge for the morning bagels and Water Street Coffee Joint for the great coffee all day!

Kindergarten Trip to the Farmers Market

Last week, all Kindergarten classes visited the local farmer market. They did this because they are learning about living things that we can use. What better place than the farmers market for something yummy and healthy!

Ronald McDonald Fire Drill

We had a surprise fire drill today as Ronald McDonald showed up with fire engines, Sparky the Fire Dog, and a whole lot of noise! The entire school assembled outside in front of the building as Ronald came to participate in our fire drill. Here is a short video with the highlights.

Reptile Visitors to Edison

The biggest news story in Kalamazoo this past week was the flooding. Not only were human lives affected by the floods, but many other living things had their natural environment interrupted as well. One example of this is the salamanders that one of our students found.

Salamanders are normally underground, but the flooding has brought many to the surface. A sharp eyed Edison student was able to safely capture three of these wonderful creatures and brought them to school to share.

In addition to the salamanders, we also have Edison the Iguana in the library and various little geckos. Reptiles are always welcome at our school...as long as they are in a cage!

These students are explaining to Principal Tansey what a salamander's habitat is, what they eat, and what they need to survive.

After a few days of observation by students, the salamanders will be released to their natural habitat.

Changing Environments Experiment

This week, third grade classes visited Mr. Johnson in the science lab to conduct a new experiment and check on their ongoing plant experiment.

Before beginning, the young scientists all wrote down what they predicted would happen. Then Mr. Johnson took a brine shrimp from an eye dropper and put it on a microscope slide. Using a special camera connected to a microscope, he was able to project the camera onto the screen for the whole class to see.

First, the students counted how many times the brine shrimp flapped over 10 seconds in its undisturbed environment and recorded the data. Then Mr. Johnson changed the environment by introducing the chemical caffeine. Caffeine can be found in many places, like soda pop and coffee and will make your heart beat faster. (Mr. Gettig perked up when he heard "coffee" mentioned!)

After introducing a chemical change to the brine shrimp's environment, the students counted how many times the creature flapped over 10 seconds and recorded the data again. They repeated this 3 times to make sure they had a good amount of data to analyze.

The results were amazing! As many students predicted, the introduction of caffeine caused the heart rate of the brine shrimp to increase.

After the brine shrimp experiment, the students observed and recorded data about the plants they are growing. They planted seeds in different kinds of dirt to see how they would grow. Some were planted in good soil, some in sand, some with fertilizer, and some without fertilizer.

Edison Podcast #2

You can now subscribe in iTunes using the link on the sidebar, or listen right from here. On this show:

• A successful open house.
• Students start using the new technology.
  
• The new magnet curriculum in action.
• Announcements of interest to the families of Edison.

Open House 2008

Thanks to everyone who came out to see all of the great things happening at Edison Environmental Science Academy last night! We had our Fall Open House from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM. Many families came through to see their wonderful teachers and hear about the great things happening here.

Here are a few pictures from Open House 2008.

Just before Open House, Mr. Johnson picked some of the fresh vegetables from the Edison Garden. Families that visited his room were able to take some of these fresh goodies home!






Mrs. Buckhannon had her new SmartBoard and digital projector on so that students and parents could see and use it for themselves. This student is not only writing on the board, but he is actually writing on the computer screen. Interactive SmartBoards are in every classroom at Edison.




This student is sitting at the podcast studio desk while her parent takes a picture. You can hear her voice soon on the Edison Environmental Science Academy podcast.

Edison Podcast #1

We are excited to unveil the Edison Environmental Science Academy podcast! Subscribe with the links on the side of the page, or listen in your browser with the player below.

A Simple Math Activity

It has been an exciting first week at Edison Environmental Science Academy! Learning opportunities are everywhere as we begin the new school year and start using our new curriculum. Two of our teachers teamed up today and shared an engaging classroom activity experience. Here is a video that shows what they did.

First Day of the 2008-2009 School Year

Welcome back! We are so excited to start a new school year at Edison Environmental Science Academy!

As you can tell from this blog, we had a busy summer program with Garden Camp. While that was happening, many of our teachers were working on a new curriculum for grades K-5. We have a lot of new technology for our teachers and students to use, like a SmartBoard in every classroom. Our teachers have been learning how to use them, and very soon they will be teaching our students to use them interactively too!

Here is a quick Animoto of pictures from the first day. Welcome back!

To the movies!

Today was an extra fun day at Garden Camp. We started by journaling about habitats, then went outside to paint the benches some more. Mr. Gettig was there to capture the action on video. In fact, it seems like every time we turn around he is standing there with a camera!



After painting, we cleaned up and got ready to go to the movies. Yes, the movie theater! We went to Wall-E, which has a theme similar to our school theme. We came back and had our silent reading time and also took time to do some creative writing. We wrapped up the day listening to Miss Smith read more of our book out loud to us.

Check back tomorrow to see the final post for Garden Camp 2008. Even though the summer program is over, this blog will continue to be updated as things happen in the garden at Edison!

Leaving Our Mark

Since we worked on our designs yesterday, today was the day to paint the benches on the playground! We started by journaling about habitats, plants, and why community service is important. Painting pretty designs on the benches is our community service today.

Before we could start painting, we needed to get our gardening done. Once that was complete, we made our way to the back of the school to the two benches we planned to paint. Here is a video that shows what we did.



It took awhile to get cleaned up from the painting, after which we ate lunch, played, and read silently. We always take time after reading to write in our reading journals so we can look back and see what we learned from our reading time. Sometimes it is fun to go back and read what we wrote too. We sure have learned a lot this summer!

We had a lesson in the afternoon about habitat destruction. All living creatures need habitat and when we disturb that for wild animals it can have unintended consequences. This lesson made us think about the book we have been reading out loud since that is what is happening in that story. (The book is Hoot by Carl Hiaasen.)

Check back tomorrow to see what adventure we have in Garden Camp!

Building, Designing, and Habitat

After a nutritious breakfast and journaling time, we made our way outside to work on the garden. Some of our peppers were vandalized, which is very sad. We found some of them smashed on the pavement nearby, but we were able to make something good out of it. We took the seeds from the smashed peppers and will replant them. All plants come from seeds so these will be very useful the next time we plant!

After gardening, we made our way to the back area of the playground where Mr. Johnson has been building new boxes for us to plant in. Here is a video of us at work.



As you can see from the video, we also worked on the designs for the park benches on our playground. They had graffiti on them, which we painted over with primer. It rained today, so we decided to wait until tomorrow to paint our designs on the benches. We all made two designs and presented them to the class. Even Mr. Johnson had a design and presented it!

Miss Smith talked with us about habitats. A habitat is where living organisms live. We took time to draw our habitat...our rooms at home! Mr. Gettig especially liked the pictures we drew so we gave them to him for safe keeping. Speaking of pictures, we took a little time to work on our photo book with Mr. Gettig too. It will be neat to get our own printed copies at the end of Garden Camp.

We wrapped up the day by listening to Mr. Johnson read out loud to us from our book. It is getting near the end and is very exciting! Check back tomorrow for pictures of our benches being painted with our beautiful designs!

Busy Week!

Indeed, it was a busy week at Garden Camp. There were so many things to learn and do. Meanwhile, some of our grown-up leaders had meetings too. Everyone had something to do, that's for sure!

One of our field trips this week was to Portage Creek to test the water quality. We were volunteer scientists for a day! Here is a video that shows what we did.



After testing the water quality, we walked over to Kik Pool for some fun in the water there. We also visited a local park and lake for swimming this week. Clean water is very important for drinking, cooking, watering gardens, and for our enjoyment (like swimming) as well. One thing we really learned this week was how important the water cycle is and that we can have a positive impact on it.

Next week is the last week of Garden Camp. Keep checking this blog to see how we wrap things up!

Water and Peppers

Today was unlike any other day at Garden Camp. Miss Smith was stranded and could not make it to school, Mr. Johnson had a meeting and he had to leave early, so Mr. Gettig took over for Mr. Johnson with the help of one of his daughters! (She took all of the pictures for today.)

We started with breakfast and journaling time. Today we learned about water and the water cycle. Mr. Johnson explained how water goes from earth to the sky as clouds. We also watched a little bit of a video about the water cycle from Mr. Gettig's computer. We learned about evaporation, condensation, and water quality. Mr. Johnson demonstrated this by making a cloud in a jar. Here is a video of it.



Part of our lesson was learning about water quality. Mr. Johnson showed us that the quality of water can be measured by looking at what kind of things live in the water. Some bugs can live in dirty water while some are much more sensitive. Tomorrow, we will be measuring the quality of water in a nearby creek and report our findings to the scientists that track that stuff. We get to be volunteer scientists for a day! To practice, we were each given a sheet with a list of bugs found in a pretend river. We looked at the bugs, identified them, and wrote our findings on a water quality data form. Then we calculated the water quality for our pretend rivers. We are ready for the creek tomorrow!

After the lesson on water, it was time for Mr. Johnson to go to his meeting. Mr. Gettig took us outside and we pulled weeds for awhile. The rain over the weekend made them grow fast! Our vegetables are growing good too, especially the peppers. We were able to pick some of them! Here are pictures of our first pepper harvest.

We didn't know it, but Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gettig were busy last Friday building. We went and looked at the new gardening boxes near the playground. They are made from really strong materials and look cool! We lined them with landscape lining and put a layer of dead leaves on top of that. We will be adding soil and planting more very soon.

After lunch and free time, we read, wrote in our journals, worked on our picture book, and listened as Mr. Gettig read out loud to us. Tomorrow, we are going to be volunteer scientists and take a special field trip. Check back for pictures!

A Special Visitor

In addition to gardening, we are getting really good at journaling. That's because we do it every morning before going outside to garden! Mr. Johnson and Miss Smith write questions on the board to help us get started, but then it is up to us to write in our journals. When Garden Camp is over, we will be able to go back and read them to see what we learned this summer.

We worked out in the garden and in the flower beds in the front of the school. So many of the vegetables look like they are almost ready to be picked. We are excited to taste some of them when they are ready! We have learned that growing food locally is good for the environment because it doesn't take all the trucks to transport it to the store. Also, the things growing in our garden have no fertilizer or pesticides so they will be healthier and taste much better. Who knows, maybe someday some of us will have big gardens and sell fresh vegetables to local restaurants like Food Dance that we visited last week!

After gardening, we had a very special guest come to our class. Ms. Tammy Barnard of the Edison Neighborhood Association spoke to us about our neighborhood and the good things that are going on around us. We told her how we were doing our part to help make things better by working on the flower beds in front of our school, picking up trash, planting pretty flowers and bushes at a nearby house, and growing our own fresh food. Ms. Barnard brought each of us our very own copy of the Edison Voice, the newspaper published by the neighborhood association. You can see the Edison Neighborhood Association website at http://www.edisonneighborhood.com Thanks you, Ms. Barnard, for visiting us!

After a quick snack, we watched "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss. Wow! It was a neat story, but we all understood it had a bigger idea. If all the trees get cut down, there will be no habitat for animals. If factories keep polluting, the fish will die. And if there are no more trees, we will not have clean air. All the people that bought thneeds didn't really need them. We decided we can all make a difference with the decisions we make.

After lunch and recess, we had silent reading time and reading journal time. Then we all wrote a story about what we would do if someone was ruining the Edison neighborhood, like Mr. Onceler in The Lorax. We finished the day listening to Miss Smith read out loud to us. All in all, it was a great day at Garden Camp!

Field trip to the Nature Center

Today we took a field trip to the Nature Center! Before leaving though, we took time to eat a healthy breakfast, journal, and think up questions to ask the people that work at the Nature Center. Some of our questions included:

What kind of bugs do you have on the bug tour?
How many different kind of plants do you have?
Do you have gardens? If so, what do you grow?

We packed our lunches in a big cooler that we loaded into Mr. Johnson's Jeep. Mr. Gettig also drove his car. The Nature Center is about 15 minutes away from our school. Here is a video with pictures!



When we arrived, we met Ms. Sarah. She was our tour guide for the morning. There was a lot to see and do! Here's what some of our students have to say about visiting the Nature Center:

Brian: "It was very nice and I liked the birds, the cages, and the Nature Center is awesome. By the way, how did you get all those bees?"

Stephanie: "I liked when we got to see the butterflies in the butterfly garden. I also liked when we got to go around and look at the birds."

A typical morning at Garden Camp

It was raining when we arrived, so it took a little longer to get outside today. We had breakfast, journaled, learned about recycling, and worked on our picture book before heading outside to garden. Here is a video that shows what we do on a typical morning.



After gardening, we ate lunch and played on the playground. Because the weather got nicer, we were able to have our silent reading time outside again. When we came back in, we journaled about what we read and went to the computer lab to play some Internet games about changing our environment for the better. Who knew learning could be so much fun?

We wrapped up the day by listening to Mr. Johnson read to us. We are getting to end of the book and it is very exciting to hear!

Tomorrow we are taking a field trip. Check back to see pictures and maybe a video!

The Environment: Carbon Footprint

We took care of our morning gardening chores after a good breakfast and journaling time. There was plenty to do because weeds grow fast! We planted more cucumbers too. We also worked in front of the school more to help it look even better. A gardener's work is never done!

While we took a break for snack, Miss Smith shared with us what a carbon footprint is and helped us think of examples in our own lives. A carbon footprint is how much carbon we as humans create. Some of us create more and some of us create less. Our decisions about how we travel, the kind of light bulbs we use, the kind of food we eat, and many more things can have an impact on our carbon footprint.

After lunch in the courtyard, we stayed outside for our silent reading time. We came inside to journal more and to prepare to go into the computer lab. Miss Smith found a cool website that helped each of us calculate our carbon footprint. You can calculate yours by clicking on this link. We wrote down our results and came back to class to talk about what we discovered. Some of us had a bigger carbon footprint than others, and we all agreed that there are things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint.

We finished the day feeding the frogs and gecko's in the library and getting ready for tomorrow. We are excited that sometime this week Miss Tocco might stop in to tell us about her gardening experience this summer!

Field trip to Food Dance

It was an exciting start to Garden Camp today. There was a lot of rain last night and branches down outside. The roof was also being repaired, but our part of the building was fine. We started with breakfast, journaling, and writing a list of questions to ask when we get to Food Dance. Yes, today we went to Food Dance Restaurant in downtown!

Before leaving for the field trip, we worked on the flower beds in front of the school and planted many daisies. We also pulled weeds. Our school is looking better every day and we are doing our part! After cleaning up, it was time to leave for our field trip!

Here is a video that shows what we did at Food Dance.



Food Dance buys as much of their food and products from local and Michigan farmers as they possibly can. They are doing what we learned about yesterday: buying from local places helps to keep money and jobs in our local area! This was especially interesting to us as gardeners because we are growing fresh vegetables and fruits. These are the kinds of things a business like Food Dance would buy for their restaurant.

The nice people at Food Dance gave us all a brownie to take back to school to enjoy for our afternoon snack. It was extra neat to eat them because we knew they were made from locally grown ingredients. While we enjoyed the brownies, we listened to Miss Smith read out loud to us. We also picked pictures and wrote captions for our story book with Mr. Gettig.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, which means Happy Birthday America! See you next week!

The importance of local

After breakfast and journaling, we went outside to work in the garden. There is always something to do out there! Our hard work is starting to show as we see the tomatoes, carrots, peppers, strawberries, and other plants starting to get bigger...even bigger than they were just last week!

When our gardening was done, we went to the front of the school to work in the flower beds near the main entrance of the school. We pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and planted many pretty flowers like hostas. It is a good feeling to know that we are making our school look better all the time.

After cleaning up and enjoying a snack, we played a game. Mr. Johnson gave half of us tiny marshmallows and half of us pieces of spaghetti. We also got post-it notes that represented money. We could buy more marshmallows and spaghetti from each other or from Mr. Johnson. In fact, Mr. Johnson sold them to us at a lower cost. He said that we represented the local people and he represented the big store. That's why he could sell them to us cheaper. Here is a video that shows what we did.



Our goal was to build the tallest building we could using those materials. But since no one had all the materials to start with, we had to buy from each other and Mr. Johnson. At the end, some of us had buildings that stood and others did not. But the real lesson came when Mr. Johnson showed us that he, the big store, had all of the money! He showed us how when we buy locally, the money and the jobs stay in our local area. But the big store is owned by someone who doesn't even live here and so all of the money left our local area, or "economy". We all agreed that buying locally whenever we can is better than buying from a big name store.

After lunch and silent reading, we all wrote thank you notes to Mrs. Gardner for the dirt pudding and juice she brought us last week. It was very tasty!

Tomorrow, we are taking a field trip to a local restaurant. Check our blog tomorrow to see pictures and read all about it!

Service and Learning

We started the day with a great discussion of plants again. There are so many things to learn about plants! Later this week, we are going on a field trip to a place that uses plants that are grown locally. That will be fun!


Today we finished up at the house of the Grandpa of one of our students. We got a lot planted yesterday, but today we did the edging and added some wood chips.

We came back, cleaned up, and starting working on our memory book. Mr. Gettig showed us a website where you can build a picture book and add your own stories. We thought about the adventures we have already had in Garden Camp and started to put them together as story pages in our book. When the book is done, we will all get a copy of it to remember this summer by.

Speaking of books, the nice people from Kazoo Books came by and brought us three big stacks of books that are related to our summer program and our Magnet school theme. Because they looked for all of these books just for us, now the nice people at Kazoo Books understand better what we are learning at Edison and will let us know if they see more books that would be good for us!

After lunch and reading, we had another great lesson from Mr. Johnson and Miss Smith. They are great teachers and keep our attention. They really make learning about plants fun!

We finished the day with a snack and listening to our book being read to us. Tomorrow, we will learn more about plants we eat and why it is good to eat locally grown food.

Week 3 is underway!

We started week three of Garden Camp today!

After a healthy breakfast, we wrote in our journals and answered two questions: what are the parts of the plant we eat? Why do we eat plants?

Plants have leaves, roots, a stem, seeds, flowers, and sometimes fruit. We eat plants to help keep us healthy. They have many nutrients that people need.

We pulled weeds in the garden today. It is important to pull the weeds so that the plants get all the nutrition, not the weed. We also pulled weeds in front of the building to help our school continue to look great!


We did some planting at one of our neighbors, who is also the grandad of one of us at garden camp!

After lunch and free time, we spent time reading silently. Then Mr. Johnson shared with us what the parts of plants do. There’s a lot going on in there!

Then we cleaned up, watered the garden one more time, and finished the day listening to Miss Smith read out loud to us.

Here is a video of today:



Garden Camp at Edison rocks!

Week 2

This week was awesome! We learned all about farms and how farmers grow plants and raise animals to make money. We were able to visit a farm and see how these farmers raised cows to get milk and fertilizer. We also designed our own farms. We made posters and went to the computer lab to make advertisements. Overall, this week was just as fun as last week, and I can't wait for next week!!

Day 6

We had plenty to do and learn on Day 6 of camp. Starting the day by journaling is a great to get our thinkers activated and ready to learn! We also took care of morning gardening chores by watering and weeding. It was time to plant some more of our plants from the greenhouse too.

The weather was beautiful so we had lunch outside in the courtyard again. In addition to our own silent reading time, Mr. Johnson and Miss Smith have been reading a book to us. It is a mystery book and keeps us on the edge of our seat!

Community service is part of what we do at Garden Camp. We spoke to one of our neighborhood friends about helping him with his yard. We are excited for the opportunity to serve!

Tomorrow, we might be taking a field trip. Check back to see where we go!

Day 5

Today was a busy day! There were extra people here today taking pictures for our school. They took many pictures of our Garden Camp activities too. Here are what two students have to say about today:

Dominick: "We pulled weeds and watered our plants. We also ate lunch. We also did a KWL chart about farms. Miss Smith told us to look at things in our house to see what came from a farm. Corn, peas, and other things grow in the spring. In summer, soybeans, watermelon, cucumber, celery, zucchini and peppers are grown. We played outside on the swingsets and picked up trash."

Joanna: "We ate snacks. We watered. We learned about farm animals. A chicken comes from a chicken. Milk comes from a cow. Eggs come from a hen. Meat comes from a pig and a cow. We played outside and picked up trash."

Here is a video with a few highlights from today:

Day 4 - Farmers Market and Microscopes

Today we got a great start with breakfast in the room and by journaling. Today was also our first trip to the farmers market, so we worked together to create a list of questions for our research. Our questions were:

• Where do your seeds come from?
• How long did it take for _____ to grow?
• How many different types of plants do you grow?
• What jobs do you do to make your plants grow?
• How do you know when to pick?
• How do you decide the price?

With clipboards and our questions in hand, we walked to the farmers market, which is just a few blocks away. Here is a video with pictures of what we did on our field trip.




After lunch and silent reading time, we explored microscopes! We learned that a microscope magnifies whatever is being viewed by 4, 10, and sometimes 40 times! To demonstrate, Mr. Johnson showed us the letter 'e' under the microscope connected to the computer.


After that, we were able to use the microscopes that Mr. Johnson got out for us. He and Miss Smith helped us get the different slides of corn parts focused so that we could draw them. The tiny little things under the microscope were cells. We learned that every living thing is made up of cells, even people!


On Monday, we will see more pictures of cells and start another week of Garden Camp!

The First Week of Garden Camp

The first week of garden camp was SO MUCH FUN!! We have already learned a ton about what it takes to grow plants, and what we can do with the plants we grow. My favorite part of the week was our trip to Farm N Garden. Ben, the owner, gave us an amazing tour and taught us so much about how we use plants. He also let us eat many of the vegetables that he had growing in his garden. This week was great, I can't wait until Monday!

This Weeks Theme

This week we have been learning about how to classify plants and the anatomy of plants. We have been observing the plants in our schoolyard to identify plant structures that are similar and not so similar. Today we observed different kinds of roots, leaves, stems and seeds. Tomorrow we will look at the most basic structure of the plant, the cell. This will be many of the students first experience with a microsocpe.

Day 3 - Community Service

There was plenty to learn and do on day three of Garden Camp. We started by writing answers in our journal to these questions: What are three things we learned at Farm N Garden yesterday? What do we want to do with our plants after they grow? After collecting them, how many different types of plants do we think are outside of Edison?

Mr. Johnson showed us three of his books from college. They are botany books and list all of the plants that are native to Michigan. There are over 250,000! He said those books are like a dictionary for plants in Michigan. Instead of looking up words, you have to identify the plant by its leaves instead.



After that, it was time for some gardening. Some of us planted tomatoes and carrots while others helped to weed the other garden beds. Gardening is hard work but it is also very fun and rewarding!

After a quick snack, we split into two groups to canvas the neighborhood with our letter that we wrote on day one. This is the letter where we offer assistance to our neighbors to help with their gardens and yards.

The weather was beautiful, so we came back and had lunch in the courtyard. Chicken noodle soup, crackers, and an apple slice with peanut butter...yummy!

In the afternoon, we talked about the different parts of a plant. We learned about the root system, stems, and more. There is more to a plant than meets the eye!

We wrapped up the day by watering, reading, and journaling. Tomorrow, we are taking another field trip. Check back to video of where we went and what we did!

Day 2 - Field Trip to Farm N Garden

We started the day journaling and preparing for our field trip to Farm N Garden. Here is a video with highlights of the trip.




We learned many things from Mr. Ben at Farm N Garden. Did you know there are more than 9,000 kinds of grass in the world? They have many different species growing in the botanical garden there. Some grasses don't grow as fast as others, which means they don't have to be mowed as often. This is good for the environment because if we mow less, we use less gasoline and produce fewer emissions into the atmosphere.

We saw more than grass though. There was alfalfa, sorghum, and clover, which are grown for feeding animals. They also had broccoli, peas, and different kinds of edible greens that people can eat for food. We even got to try some of them fresh from the garden!

As our tour started to wind down, Mr. Ben and his daughter brought us healthy snacks (carrots, grapes, and juice boxes) that we enjoyed in the sunshine. The botanical garden is a great place for a picnic!

Before we left, we looked at the seeds in the Farm N Garden store. All of us were able to pick out a few seeds that we could plant ourselves back at Edison. We also picked out gloves to use while gardening.

When we returned, we had a healthy lunch and some time to play on the playground. Everyone came back together in the courtyard for silent reading time, which went by really fast! We wrapped up the day by planting our seeds and watering the garden. All in all, it was a great day at Garden Camp!

Special thanks to Ben and all the staff at Farm N Garden for making our field trip a great time!

Day 1 - Here we are!

It was a great start to Garden Camp 2008 at Edison today!

We started with introductions, then got right into it. First, we journaled and asked ourselves these questions: What do all plants have? What do all plants need? How do we use plants? There are many different answers and we wrote about them in our journals.

After a quick snack, Mr. Johnson reviewed how to water plants, pull weeds, handle tools, how to plant, and handed out gloves for us to use. Then we went outside and planted peppers and tomatoes.

Part of Garden Camp will include serving our community. Together, we wrote a letter that we will give to our neighbors near Edison asking if we can be of service to them and help keep their garden and yard looking as good as ours. It is good citizenship to be of service to our neighbors.

After lunch, we toured the school grounds looking for different kinds of plants that grow right in our own yard. We took samples of these and brought them back to our classroom to organize them. There were big, small, skinny, wide, and many other ways to categorize them. We put them on large sheets of paper so that we can study them further and better organize them.

One of things we need to do twice a day is water the plants that we are growing. We have some things growing in the greenhouse, but some things are outside too. We all get the opportunity to water, weed, and care for the things we are growing.

We wrapped up the day with silent reading, learning about the different parts of a plant, and listening to Miss Smith read to us. Overall, it was a great first day of Garden Camp at Edison Environmental Science Academy!

Welcome!

Welcome to the official blog of all things gardening and green at Edison Environmental Science Academy.