First Grade plants Norway Spruce Sapplings on the Short Hills Campus!

After a wonderful morning of composting and learning about the importance of rich, fertile soil we got to try our hand at planting! Oh what fun we had!

Mr. Gagliardi, a Pingry parent and staff member, let us help him with the planting of Norway Spruce sapplings on the Short Hills campus. First, we learned all about what plants need in order to grow and the dos and don'ts of planting. Then he sent each first grader on their way, sappling in hand to find the perfect planting spot! Parents, be sure to ask your first grader what the special potting plants were made out of and how tall our sapplings will get over the years!

Even though it was a bit chilly outside, we bundled up and headed out to find a great spot for our sapplings! It was much harder work than we anticipated! Lots of rocks and roots were in the soil, but we also saw lots of wonderful signs that the soil was rich and filled with nutrients for our sapplings. We saw lots and lots of worms in the ground, so we know that our sapplings are in good hands! We promised to come back and sing to them, talk to them and make sure they were growing along the edge of the forest! We'll be checking in!

Composting & Planting in Pingry's First Grade!

Wow! What an exciting day we had! We had a terrific lesson from Ms. Erica Fischer from the Cora Hartshorne Arboretum. She told us the basics about composting, and we surprised her because we already knew a lot! While we haven't done any composting yet, we sure know a lot about it! We're getting ready to dig in!

We enjoyed spending the morning doing hands on activities as we learned about the importance of reusing our "greens". Be sure to ask your first grader what can and cannot be put into a compost! They know all the rules!

We played with worms, tried to identify decomposing food and learned lots and lots of great vocabulary! We even added those special words to our personal dictionaries! Be sure to ask your first grader about words like ' humus, castings, decompose and fertilizer'. We know all about it!

Then we took a terrific walk on our Pingry grounds and used our senses to see what we could find. We 'heard' the waterfall, snapping twigs, birds and the wind. We 'smelled' the leaves and plants. We 'saw' signs of animal homes and even saw animals skeletons! We didn't 'touch' much, and certainly didn't 'taste' anything, but we had a terrific time! Check out our pictures on the side bar and see the fun we had!

Back from a busy day in the Lovett Garden!

Hi Guys!
I'm back from a very busy day at the Lovett School in Atlanta! I spent the whole day helping out my friend Ms. Spiers teach her science classes! We taught four 2nd grade classes and one first grade class. It was a lot of work, but lots of fun! I learned so many new things and got lots of wonderful ideas for things to do!

When I went to see Ms. Spiers in the fall, their garden wasn't built yet. They just had that wonderful green house that I showed you pictures of. Today, they have a terrific garden that the students manage with a little help from their wonderful science teacher and the maintenance staff. Wait until you see the pictures!!! I'll post them on the side bar shortly!

Guess what kinds of things they are growing in their garden? I'm going to put a survey at the bottom to see if you can guess what my favorite thing in the garden was! Log on and find out!

Ms. SW