Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden

Bianca Tondo

Garden Specialist

Hello Kingswood Community,

The middle of winter in a garden is quite slow – the soil is cold and the sun doesn’t pop out as much as we would like causing our vegetables to grow quite slowly. Our winter crops that were planted in late April are now ready. We have broccoli, cauliflower, silver beet, wombok, pak choy, beetroots and rocket already to be harvested at the moment.

We have been very lucky that the rain has held off this term and despite the slow-growing conditions, we have been kept quite busy!

Weeds will grow rapidly in any season. All classes found satisfaction in weeding a garden bed. It may not start off as the student’s favourite activity, but is very rewarding at the end of a session to see a cleared piece of the patch. Students get enjoyment out of associating the habit of mind "persisting" once the task has been finished.

One of my favourite places in the school at the moment is the vertical garden. It is a beautiful splash of colour on a grey day. The Year 6 students helped replant some of the pansy growing and tidy up the garden so it is looking nice and fresh again.

The chicken coop has provided much excitement for the students so far this term. Please check out their reflections below to catch up on all the action!!!

Some of the Year 3 even managed to make a rainbow! Check the photos!

Happy Gardening Kingswood!

Reflections

We enjoyed finding the caterpillars today. It was interesting and unique to find them. They are well camouflaged on the leaves. We even saw one laying eggs! We also found a GIANT worm! We used the habit of mind of "being in awe and wonderment" when looking for the bugs and patting the chickens. We noticed that the chickens are smooth, calm, and soft. Using your senses in the garden and being mindful is relaxing and good for our mental health.

We thought we used the habit of mind of "thinking flexibly" today as we had to decide on what to do with the bugs once we found them. We also "strived for accuracy" in pulling out the weeds as we had to make sure we were not pulling out the carrots instead of the weeds.

We noticed water droplets on the cauliflower. They looked like crystals and wobbled like jelly!

We let the chickens out of their coop today. We enjoyed chasing them around, feeding them bugs and watching them gobble them up. We also liked guiding them back into the chicken coop. Bianca explained to us why we use wooden eggs in the chicken coop which was really interesting.

We were surprised that the weeding was enjoyable today. We enjoyed learning what was a weed and what was a vegetable. When we were weeding we also found bugs.

We harvested bay leaves and they smelt so good!

Today we cleaned out the chicken coop. When cleaning out the water containers we had to make sure we cleaned the inside of the container and rinsed them out.

Whilst we were cleaning out the chicken coop we stumbled across 3 rats!! Some people were scared and some were not phased. Bianca screamed! We decided to take out the place where they were living so they can go away and find new homes!

We took a "responsible risk and kept persisting" even when we were weary of the rats! We had to "think flexibly" about how we were approaching the rat problem and what we were going to do about it!

It was freezing today!! We had fun because we let the chickens out. It was good to see them out of the cage and to be closer to them. We also cleaned out the chicken coop and planted broccoli. It was a good experience doing the garden as we got to do something new. We got to do things we wouldn’t normally do at home like cleaning the chicken coop and planting seedlings.

Today we used the HOM of "persisting", even though it was cold and raining and we wanted to be indoors, we still planted and cleaned out the chicken coop. We also strove for accuracy when putting the chickens back in their coop because they didn’t want to go back in.